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The Current Transcript for May 14, 2020

Host: Matt Gallaway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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I went through SARS. I've been through Ebola. I've been through the pandemic in 2009 and I just know how stressful it is.

MATT HALLOWAY: Species' provincial health officer Dr Volney Henry has witnessed firsthand what nurses experienced in a pandemic. As Canada marks and nurses week like no other, a look at what they're facing and why they want better protection. That's coming up in just a moment. We've learned a lot over these last few months of lockdown, including what those hauling the goods we need everyday are facing on the road.

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You just can't use the facilities. So you hold it, carry on, hope for, pray for the next one.

MG: In an hour. How this moment is leading people to rethink the humble public bathroom, not just for truckers, but for all of us looking for a bit of relief. Also this morning, are you among the 11 million plus people playing animal crossing? The insanely popular game has become a quarantine sensation. Video games are big business. Is it time we recognise them as more than just a distraction? We'll debate that. Plus, the fight for universal basic income. Former U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang made it the centre of his platform and he'll explain why. Now is the time to finally make it happen. We'll start, though, on the frontlines with those bearing arguably the greatest burden nurses. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is an extended edition of The Current.

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First registered nurse in Canada dies from COVID-19

Guests: Chelsy Vandenberg, Linda Silos, Elizabeth Peter

MG: Brian Beattie became a nurse more than two decades ago, and according to his family, he loved his job. Brian worked at Kensington Village, a long term care home in London, Ontario. Multiple staff there have tested positive for Corona virus. And now Brian Beattie is the first registered nurse in Canada to die after contracting COVID-19. Here's a bit more of the statement released by his niece, Amber. Quote: "I will remember his laugh identical to my grandmas laugh. I will miss his random middle of the night texts since he worked very different hours than I did. We can all learn a lot from his dedication". News of Brian Beatty's death happens to come in the middle of National Nurses Week. And this is a time when nurses organizations are speaking out about how their members could be better protected from COVID-19. In the meantime, nurses across this country continue to work the frontlines of this pandemic. Chelsy Vanderberg is a registered nurse in Edmonton and joins us now from the nightshift at Grey Nuns' Community Hospital. Chelsy, good morning.

CHELSY VANDENBERG: Good morning.

MG: When you hear of the death of a nurse from COVID-19, the death of Brian Beatty, what goes through your mind?

CHELSY VANDENBERG: Oh, it's I don't know if there's any other word that that besides heartbreaking or, you know, terrifying. I think it really brought things back home for me when I heard about it, because, you know, you it's very easy to become comfortable in the work that you're doing. You know, since everything has changed for us, you know, it's still it's all became routine. You know, every day coming to work now during a pandemic, you could still plan for what your day was going to be. And, you know, you get comfortable because it's what you've been doing for the past two months now. And I think hearing that one of my own, one of my nursing family members, you know, so to speak. You know, they're taking all the precautions that we're taught to take. I'm still was at risk and still, you know, got infected and the worst case for him occurred. And he died. And so I think it really, really, really hit home that it's still very real. And it's not going anywhere, you know, just yet.

MG: So you're on the job right now. I mean, you're on a break.

CHELSY VANDENBERG: Yes I am.

MG: You're at work on the shift. What is life like at work for you right now?

CHELSY VANDENBERG: You know, it's a little bit unnerving. It's a little bit- I think when the pandemic started, it was scary. You know, the word that we were we were using was scary. You know, really uncertain, really unpredictable. And then it got a little bit more predictable. And we found out more about the virus. We found out more about how we needed to protect ourselves when we could predict what the volume in the hospital would look like. It got maybe a little bit easier. And now that Tom announcements are coming that things are going to start opening up and rules or guidelines are loosening, it's getting scary again, because a word to a new a new point again, where we have the volumes that we used to see before the pandemic. Plus now all of these patients that we have to isolate for, even minor respiratory symptoms, the numbers are climbing and climbing and climbing. And, you know, it only takes a split second for one of your procedures or, you know, donning doffing PPE, washing your hands, it only takes one split second for something to not go perfectly and then someone gets infected. So just with this this extra volume that's coming in and everything taking twice as long to do because, you know, you have to do all of this extra precautionary stuff. It's a little bit scary again. And I think every day it's because things are still changing now to accommodate these increase in volumes and changes that every everyday you're learning something new. And I can't help but think it's a little bit- that makes us a little bit nervous again.

MG: Do you have the gear that you need? There's been so much talk about PPE and whether people on the front lines are getting what they need. Do you have what you need?

CHELSY VANDENBERG: I do. I do have what I need. I gave the example when I spoke with one of your workers, Rachel, and I said if I was told, Chelsy, there's a cardiac arrest, we don't know if this person is COVID positive or negative and you need to go and do CPR. I have what I need to feel comfortable to go in there and do that. Now, I can only speak to what today is. I don't know what tomorrow or the next day brings, but as I said right now, yes, I'm comfortable.

MG: But you have a mask? I mean, how often do you get to change the masks? Is it the kind of thing where- you we've heard stories of people who have to wear the same mask for an entire shift, for example. Is that what's happening there?

CHELSY VANDENBERG: Well, what's starting to be rolled out here is the sanitation of masks. So you would go in, you would use a mask and then it would get put in a bucket. So you'd have your name, kind of your employee I.D. and then what number used that is for your mask. It will get put into a bucket. It will be appropriately sanitized and then it will come back to you. So we are starting to see that now where that will be more common practise than getting a new mask every single time, you know, you just use it once. So, yes, that's been a change for us recently, too.

MG: You wrote a post on Instagram in March about how scary things felt at the hospital. And one of the things you wrote is that you aren't looking for sympathy, just understanding. So just before I let you go and get back to work, what do you want people to understand about the work that you're doing right now?

CHELSY VANDENBERG: I want people to understand it we chose this career because we want to help people. You know, we really love what we do. We really do. And we will come to work every single day. But we come in kind of blind and we still do it because we love to help people. We don't have the choice, so to speak, but we can come into these unpredictable situations, putting ourselves at risk, putting our families at risk because we were born to help people. And I just want people to understand that it's not easy and we e are scared and yet we still come. We still show up for them every single day. So if they could just take some consideration in, you know, before they go out and do certain things that might put them at risk, like we're the ones we're going to have to care for them if they end up here. And we will. But, you know, it's scary for us, too.

MG: Thanks for doing what you're doing. And stay safe. And thanks for sneaking a bit of time to talk to us this morning.

CHELSY VANDENBERG: Yes. No problem. Thanks for having me.

MG: Chelsy Vanderberg is a registered nurse at Grey Nuns' Community Hospital in Edmonton, on a break from the night shift right now. Since the start of this pandemic, testing, screening, surveillance have all ramped up partly in an effort to protect workers like Chelsy, people on the front lines. The organizations that represent nurses in Canada say more still needs to be done to keep nurses safe. Linda Silas is president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. Linda, good morning.

LINDA SILAS: Good morning, Matt.

MG: When you hear Chelsy Vanderberg in Edmonton say that she's scared that she's going to continue to do that work. But there is fear that's around her. What's your reaction?

LINDA SILAS: Well, first, I'm very proud of her to speak up because in the health care sector, it's very hard for nurses, for healthcare workers to speak up because there's always that fear; what will my employer say? So I congratulate her there, but she's right. You know, it is in nurse's DNA to go in there to go and take care of patients. They love it. And they always tell us all, even when you talk about over time, sick time, violence in the workplace: Linda, we still love to do our jobs. When they're scared to go into work because of the unknown- I was a critical care nurse. I was never scared to go into work because I knew I had the training and knew I had the equipment and my team was there. You get scared when a patient crash, for example. But you know, you know what to do. But what they're scared right now is for their own personal protection. And they're scared when they go home. You know, did they contaminate themselves or are they able to leave their uniforms at home? She explains that right now she has all the personal protective equipment she needs. And that's because of the agreement that the United Nurses of Alberta and other health care unions signed with agent AHSS, which is the employer there, that if a nurse, a health care worker believes they need a higher level of PPE, they will get them. And that's what she said.

MG: Do we know how - we are talking about the death of Brian Beattie - do we know how many nurses are getting sick?

LINDA SILAS: No, we don't. And that is such a flaw in the system and they will get sick. You know, I compare it to industrial accidents. If the building in front of me, there's a big accident, you know, immediately how many workers were injured. How many are in critical care. How many died, etc. We don't break patient confidentiality. But in health care, it's all rumours. It's all hearsay. So it's a family or c0-worker call the union and says, Oh, we have another nurse in ICU. That's how we know. It shouldn't be that way. And for Brian, that's what happened. We knew they were workers at that home that were tested positive. Then we kind of heard that one was hospitalized in ICU. And then the employer and family notified the union that he had passed away on the 12th. We need better systems to protect our members, but also for us to be able to support the workplace. So we need to know.

MG: He was working in long term care. And we've talked so much about what's happening in the long term care homes, particularly in Ontario and Quebec. We got a statement from the Ministry of Long Term Care in Ontario, which says - This is a quotation - that: "It continues to ensure that nurses and other frontline long term care workers have the critical equipment and supplies they need". Talking about same day deliveries to long term care homes, et cetera, what else needs to be done to ensure that nurses in those facilities are as safe as they can be?

LINDA SILAS: Well, I've never met the minister, so I'll try to weigh my comments. But let's be honest. You need to get out there. Long term care, and here we're talking about Ontario but it could be in any other province, was in crisis before COVID19. When people say they were blindsided and mostly politicians blindsided when COVID hit like a thunderstorm in a long term care facility, it's ridiculous because we all knew. Ontario they had the wet locker report just last year telling them they needed to do more inspections. They need to have a high level of staff. And what nurses and health care workers in the centres are telling us is there's no PPEs or we're using garbage bags or we have one - as you ask Chelsea, we have one a mass surgical masks for the day. They're trying. They're trying hard. But right now, the heroes of health care are those working in long term care sector.

MG: Elizabeth Peter has been listening in. She's a professor in nursing at the University of Toronto and is heading up a research project that is planning to look into the moral dilemmas that nurses are experiencing during this pandemic. Elizabeth, good morning to you.

ELIZABETH PETER: Hi, good morning.

MG: Chelsea talked about wanting to go into work and needing to go into work and that she would continue to go into work, but also that she's worried, she's scared and concerned about her own safety and the safety of those around her. Tell me a bit about those moral dilemmas that nurses would face in a moment like this.

ELIZABETH PETER: I think one of the things that nurses experience, I think they feel a profound responsibility to their patients. But the dilemma, of course, always is they also have a responsibility to themselves and to their family members. So many nurses are experiencing being very torn among those various responsibilities. And again, a lot of nurses will sacrifice their own well-being in ways that should be discouraged.

MG: What do we know about that sacrifice? Again, we're hearing about - I think anybody who's been in, whether it's a long term care facility or in a hospital setting knows that it's nurses who were there right on the frontlines who are doing so much of that important work. What do we know about the sacrifice that they need to make?

ELIZABETH PETER: Well, I think one of the things we understand is because nurses spend so much time with patients and there day in and day out, the experience that that moral press, if you will, to stand alongside and to care deeply for whether it is patients or residents. Along with that becomes a certain level of stress that nurses bring with them day in and day out.

MG: And so in your research, what are you hoping to learn about that stress and how nurses navigate and manage that?

ELIZABETH PETER: We're particularly interested in trying to prevent it. So we're going to be focussing in on anything that nurses have been experiencing, particularly at the level of the system guidelines and so on, to see if any of those are helping ease some of that pressure. And also, along with that, we know we're going to be looking at whether or not individual types of resilience strategies, if you will, or helpful strategies.

MG: Like what?

ELIZABETH PETER: Well, I mean, there are a whole host of things, you know, mindfulness and so on. I mean, this crosses over into other areas of research, to be sure. And we also want to know whether or not any of the education they've had perhaps in ethics has. That's been helpful. What was helpful? What was it helpful? Because this helps us plan for the future, not only for this pandemic, but in later years.

MG: Well, Linda, one of the things that has changed in this time is that sense of isolation, not only for nurses and people on the frontlines, but also for patients. We're told a lot about the emotional toll that nurses face, particularly when family and friends can't be there in the hospital setting or in the long term care. And sometimes those patients are at the end of their lives. What are you hearing from nurses about how difficult that moment can be?

LINDA SILAS: But we're hearing what Chelsy was explaining in the acute in the hospital care sector to prepare to receive COVID-19 patients. They reduce the capacity and it's around 70 percent across the board. You know, some a little bit lower. Some are low, but high. Well, that gives more time to nurses to do that type of one on one caring with palliative patients or with patients that are just alone and scared. We're not used to that. You know, you and I are probably in the same situation. You know, you tried to work from home. You tried to work from isolated area. But we're human beings. We need that connectivity. And when you're sick, it's even worse. So they tried their best. Where they're really challenge is in the long term care sector, those that don't have any outbreak are doing their job. But imagine when I hear stories of nurses that are too scared to go home and are living in a trailer or living in a hotel, and some haven't seen their children for a couple a week. That will, as Elizabeth just explained, even put more pressure on their mental health state under ethical decisions on how and why do I go to work?

MG: How do you think that those nurses could be better supported? Elizabeth talked about some of the coping mechanisms. What would nurses need in those moments when they are carrying a burden that nobody could have anticipated?

LINDA SILAS: It's knowing. You have to feel secure that you will get the training you need, you will get the personal protective equipment you need. This infighting that we have with employers of signing on to one tepees or N-95 or the policy, [unintelligible] out there that are creating policies that are so complex and when we should be trusting. Nurses don't want to waste PPEs. Doctors don't want to waste PPEs. We know when we need them. And if you tell them, tell us that we're short or are going to be short, we will know what to do. But this policing around this is just scaring everyone and creating more stress.

MG: We have just a couple of minutes left. We have talked a lot about at the beginning of this what we had learned from SARS and coming out of the SARS crisis, again, it was nurses that bore the brunt of of what was happening on those front lines. Did we learn anything from source, Linda?

LINDA SILAS: Organisation said, I guarantee you every nurse union in every health care union out there is very well aware of the principles of SARS, which was a precautionary principle, and it was we needed to bring the safety up into our health care facility as a number one concern. And we have to tell our members, that if you're not safe, your patients are not safe. So we have to put that safety at number one, similar as we do on a construction site, similar as we do with firefighters. It's safety first. And employers haven't got that and governments haven't got that.

MG: Elizabeth, we're still in the midst of this. But what's one thing that we've learned so far? Do you think in this crisis?

ELIZABETH PETER: Well, I think that this crisis has really shown up the importance of caring society, we're recognising who is holding our health care system together. And it's not only physicians and nurses, it's also personal support workers. We're seeing the important role family and friends provide and care, particularly in long term care, where they're part of the care team, whether it's helping with providing meals and care and so on. So I think that this has really shed light on this. It's also really shown us how critical appropriate staffing in and of course, having PPE available.

MG: It's good to speak with you both. This is the story that so many of us are facing right on those front lines, whether we're speaking with those nurses or whether you happen to be there on those front lines. Linda and Elizabeth, thank you.

ELIZABETH PETER: Thank you, Matthew.

LINDA SILAS: Thank you.

MG: Elizabeth Peter is a professor in nursing at the University of Toronto. Linda Silas is the president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. Would love to hear from nurses, people who are there right on those front lines. What are you facing? And do you feel that you have the protection that you need in this situation that you are in the midst of? You can let us know through the Web site at cbc.ca/thecurrent. Coming up after the CBC News, why millions are escaping lockdown on a weirdly pleasant virtual island. I'll tell you more about that coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio.

Video games are helping people pass time in lockdown

Guests: Naomi Kyle, Lee Skwarek, Regan Mandryk

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Coming up, when you got to go, you got to go. Re-imagining the public bathroom for a pandemic. But first, how the joystick is living up to its name.

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MG: At 13 years old, he's too young to drive. But that doesn't matter in a video game. Neither does a lockdown or infection on screen. Diego Cuadra-Empy can go anywhere and do anything.

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DIEGO: Lily you got to not hit anything. All right. Drive slowly, if you have to. Go go go.

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DIEGO: I connect with friends. Normally whenever I can. It's more fun to play with your friends than by myself. I think some adults get it wrong about gaming. They only think about the violence and that it might affect your child's mind. But I really think it's more about having fun with your friends.

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VOICE: Oh, shoot.

MG: Diego is spending about five to six hours a day gaming, and his favourite game right now is Animal Crossing. Everyone, it seems, is playing this thing. If you've never played it, you have no idea what it is, don't worry. We're going to help you out. Naomi Kyle is a Canadian actor, producer and professional video game host, and she's playing the game right now. Naomi, good morning.

NAOMI KYLE: Good morning. How's it going? I'm I am playing the game.

MG: I'm sorry to distract you from the game.

NAOMI KYLE: Oh, don't worry.

MG: Just a couple of minutes of your time. Tell me what you're looking at right now on the screen.

NAOMI KYLE: Well, right now, I'm in one of the really cool spots on the island, which is the town hall, kind of where everything starts in the game. Your character, Tom Nook, who brought you to the island in the first place, is actually having a cup of [unintelligible] this morning and just at a computer, having a good time managing the islands and everything that goes on there. And actually, 5:00 am is a perfect time to hop into this game because it's right when you get your morning messages from one of the villagers and you get any sort of updates, sometimes you get a new villager's on your island. Sometimes you get a new bridge, a new houses has been built, all sorts of things.

MG: Okay. So for people who've never played this, it sounds like you're speaking another language. What is animal crossing?

NAOMI KYLE: And Crossing is primarily known as a social simulation game, but it's like a life simulation game. I start off where you're brought to this island. You're a little cute human character. You get to pick how your avatar looks, meaning dress them how you want make them look, how you want hair, facial features. And then once you're on the island, you start off in a tiny little tent, a yellow tent. And it's so iconic at the start of every game, you start that way. But then, of course, as you've gradually progressed through it, you can build a house and then next thing you know, to build your friends houses and you get to pick where they live on the island. There's all these little cute animal creatures that, of course, speak to you. You get to know them. The goal is to talk to them every day. And the other cool feature about this game is it runs kind of in real time. So the internal clock of the game is meant to replicate the real time of day that it is wherever you are in the world. So you set that up a third of the game. So every time you're in the game, it's the same day times. The weather kind of reflects what's going on in your world. And then at night, of course, it's a lot darker and different creatures come out. And yes, it's a great experience.

MG: What do you love the most about this game?

NAOMI KYLE: You know, what I think has been really special about this game, especially during this time, it's just such a cute, warm feeling environment. You know, nothing here in this world can hurt you. You know, these friends that you make on the island are so sweet. I'll never say anything to be mean to you. And the other cool aspect, of course, that people are loving now is the online element. So, like I said, social simulation game. So you can actually go to some of your friends islands on the Nintendo switch if they're playing the game. You can visit them and you can even have many people on your island at a time have these social gatherings and events and do all sorts of things on the island; exchange goods... It's just it's a great game to connect with people.

MG: Is that what you think is behind the wild popularity of this? I mean, 11 million copies of this game were sold in March alone. And that sense of connection that we can't have face to face right now, is that what's driving this, you think?

NAOMI KYLE: I think 100 percent people are just finding that this is a great time for us to stay connected. When you can't go outside, you can't do your usual day to day, go to restaurant, go meet friend, go to theatres. It's just the place where you can actually meet with people who have your general play time, sometimes within a game and a game world that has, you know, no violence. Everything is going well. The music is so soothing and fun and light-hearted. And it's a beautiful world that you can create in whichever way you please. There's just so much that you can do in this game. My friends, actually, Gary who is a writer of Road One. He wrote Book of Eli. He started his own late night talk show where he brings on guests, celebrity guests. I was actually one of his first pilot episode guests. And he has people on every pretty much every day of the week on his Twitch channel here. He livestreams it and he'll have people on to just hang out and have a blast. And you can do all sorts of things, play music, you know, exchange presents and chat over whatever your chat platform is before various different ones. But just the fact that you can do that, you know, like create your own little world. Invite people to your house. Invite people to see what the island is with, because you can create the island however you choose. It's very creative and kind of you design the island how you want it. And everyone has their own style. And it's just a great way to share something that you've created with your friends and also hang out in that world.

MG: Gaming generally, it seems like it's up during this crisis and during the pandemic. What do you make of what's going on more broadly with games right now?

NAOMI KYLE: Well, I think it's a way to be doing something. You know, a phone call can only take you so far. I feel like video games are fun to play time. Like one of the big things I think right now is the kids can't go out to meet their friends. You know, so important for a child to have a personal connection, to have play time. They can't do that now. You know, they're out of school. They're at home, homeschooled. And I feel like this sort of environment, any sort of game environment right now is so necessary for them to have some sense of normalcy, some sense of play. And so a game like Animal Crossing, you know, allows for that. It's your safety. You're in the safety of your own home. You still get, you know, that social interaction playing with your friends. And I think that that's so important. And parents are getting a first front row seat into how positive gaming can be for a child and even for themselves. You might want to hop on and play with them.

MG: Bright and positive is not a word that people often use in parents, particularly when they talk about video games. And we just heard at the very beginning, young man playing Grand Theft Auto, which is a game that's been knocked for its violence, for misogyny. People say that it's anti-social. Is that moving out of the game world right now or are we seeing a different kind of gaming ethos appearing?

NAOMI KYLE: I think 100 percent. We're seeing that the stigma is slowly but surely being flipped. I think people are trying to just show that gaming could have many different impacts on people's lives. And most the majority of the time it's positive. The majority of the time, people are going to play games as a form of escape, as a way to connect with people. Utopia anti-social should not even be a thing that is associated with gaming. If you think about what gaming brings to a person who might not have the comfort of just being going outside, they might not appreciate what that is for them. It's a way into connecting. It's a way in to seeing a different side of the world and connecting with people. I think what we're seeing is people are just warming up to the idea of gaming being a positive impact. It's something that people can do to really process a lot of their feelings and get out emotions that they normally wouldn't be able to do during their normal day to day life. So I think for me, I've just seen the positive effect through and throughout my career. And there's no doubt that gaming has positive impacts on people's lives. And parents are also getting more used to the idea that this is just a good hobby for any human being.

MG: What's your character doing right now?

NAOMI KYLE: Well, she's running around a fountain place in the middle of the island and saying hi to one of her little friends here. They're a little anthropomorphic figures, this thing called Flurry. And she says something woke me up early today. And I'm like, Oh, great. Tell me more. She's got her own little story in her own little life that she lives here on the island. She's looking at a butterfly. I'm just running around the world in my PJs. One of the cool things in this game is you can dress your character however you want. And there's some great clothing designs that are very current. And you can kind of you can look medieval. You can look goth. You can look, like I said, in my PJs. So it's very diverse. There's so much to do and so much to discover, too.

MG: I'll let you get back to the game, Naomi. Good to talk to you. Thank you.

NAOMI KYLE: Yes, of course. Thanks a lot. Have a good one.

MG: And you. Naomi Kyle, Canadian actor, producer, professional video game host. She was playing Animal Crossing in Los Angeles. Animal Crossing, not the only video game helping some of us stay sane during this lockdown time. Lee Skwarek is known as Lee the Gaming Guy works for the Winnipeg Gaming Store P&P games. Lee, good morning to you.

LEE SKWAREK: Good morning.

MG: Are you seeing a lot more people playing games these days?

LEE SKWAREK: Oh, absolutely. So we kind of shut down our local retail stores, which we have three here in Winnipeg around March 18th, which was two days before the launch of Animal Crossing, mind you. So quickly kind of shifted our business into online sales, make sure we shipped out all our pre-orders. We did have a web store. We have a robust wholesale and online sales division as well. So we kind of just shifted what we were doing. The issue was, it was March, so everyone had stocked up for March and suddenly got December when all this went down. With Animal Crossing coming out, switch consoles became very quickly hard to find. There are new consoles coming out later this year in the P.S. 5 and the new X-Box series X. So they were already drawing up their hardware for that. And then suddenly this huge wave of demand hit. It hits everything. We normally stock contemporary titles on our web store. We also have retro titles as well. So people are buying Super Nintendo Games N64 as well as the contemporary ones accessories, controllers are breaking. So you get to access gaming.

MG: It's a good time to be in the gaming business, clearly.

LEE SKWAREK: Yes, we get the privilege of kind of staying open throughout this and helping people out. Gaming has been huge all pandemic long.

MG: For people who don't play games, what do people get wrong, do you think, about gaming?

LEE SKWAREK: So gaming is pretty ubiquitous. It is the largest, I believe, entertainment industry that exists right now. And I believe video gaming has just always been associated with the youth. It is very young. You know, videogames is barely over 40 years old. A lot of those people are now having kids they're raising their kids with video games. And the idea of there being controversy about the subject matter, be it the violence and stuff like that. There are rating systems in place that people are well aware of. People who are raising their kids with videogames now are aware of this. If they decide to let their child play GTA, that's been their decision. Things like the World Health Organization's kind of view on gaming in the past few years has kind of been, from that point of view, if you look at the tenants of what they are kind of putting out there in terms of a gaming as a disorder.

MG: Well, they're saying that it's addictive.

LEE SKWAREK: Exactly. But it's all kind of aimed towards children. It's aimed towards. My kid is, I believe, playing too much video games a day. What can I do? What is healthy? And the answer is we don't actually know. It's inconclusive. We don't know how much video games, you know, is bad. Take interest in what the kid is taking interest in, in my opinion. Kind of see what they're playing, as Naomi just said, this is kind of a front row seat to what video games are for a lot of people who might be, you know, confused about them, maybe still not knowing what kind of content they're in.

MG: Do you do you think games can be addictive and gaming can be addictive?

LEE SKWAREK: Oh, absolutely. Depending on the game. Some games are made to be played for multiple hours at a time. There's the community aspect, too. So if I'm playing games with my friends, what is an unhealthy amount of time to be chatting and playing a game with my friends? You know, there's such thing as too much games. Absolutely there is. It can be part of a healthy, balanced lifestyle. I always like to call videogames the patron saint of cancelled plans, which is what we're kind of experiencing right now. I got nowhere to go, so I'm playing more video games. Does it mean I'm addicted? You know, based on their tenants here as well, if you are, you know, calling in sick to a job to game. These are very extreme examples. Cutting people out of your life to game, lying about how much you're playing it and stuff like that. These are very, very extreme examples that can apply to any addictive thing. You're going to the casino to gamble, playing lottery tickets, you know, regularly whenever a new series comes out on Netflix, say Tiger King as my punching bag this month, it's kind of a fun meme or joke to say, hey, did you binge Tiger? Did you spend seven hours on Saturday laying in bed watching these clowns on this television show? And that's okay. That's considered funny. That's a meme. But if you're like, oh, I played seven hours of Minecraft, made the sweet house, would you like to see it? That person is like, well, we have to have you committed. That's way too much, man.

MG: Just briefly before I let you go. You talked about, you know, kind of the W.H.O. having a change of heart. It's now, you know, supporting this initiative. Play apart together. What do you make of that?

LEE SKWAREK: Absolutely. So in the before Times, BC, as it's called, before COVID, one of the tenants straight up says the use of Internet gaming to relieve negative moods such as guilt or hopelessness. I'm going to say that in the past month and a half, a lot of people have used gaming for hopelessness. It's, you know, the 180 on it from going to we're going to classify this as disorder, scientists are telling us there's inconclusive evidence, but we're going to go ahead and do it anyways, just a year later saying, hey, this is actually one of the healthiest things you can be doing. This can connect kids, you know, to their to their classmates and family. You know, if you're stuck inside the house, gaming's one of the best things you can be doing. And I'm just hoping that after this is all over, that the W.H.O. kind of looks back on this and says, you know what, it maybe we overstepped the line here. There's a lot to be still discovered with video games. They use it to treat PTSD. And I mean anxiety and stuff like that. That's what a lot of people are going through right now. Animal crossing, of course, a huge pillar of that right now.

MG: You see positives there. Lee, it's good to talk to you about this. Thank you.

LEE SKWAREK: Absolutely. Thank you.

MG: Lee Skwarek is known as Lee The Gaming Guy, he was in Winnipeg. Regan Mandryk is a computer science professor at the University of Saskatchewan. She has been studying gaming for many, many years, has been listening. Regan, good morning to you.

REGAN MANDRYK: Good morning.

MG: What are you make of it? Lee says there's been a bit of a change of heart when it comes to the World Health organisation. Initially worrying about the addictive quality of gaming now saying, you know what, maybe in these strange times that we're in gaming is good to connect people. What do you make of that?

REGAN MANDRYK: I don't necessarily think those two things are at odds, because I think the research has shown that gaming really exists on a spectrum from, you know, healthy behaviour that's putting a lot of benefits, social benefits, like we're talked about emotional benefits, even cognitive benefits through to something that we like to call problematic gaming, which is where it starts to interfere with other activities in your life. And all the way through to what the WHO called gaming disorder, which is that kind of pathological gaming that you might need to seek treatment for.

MG: What is good about gaming, what good can come out of gaming?

REGAN MANDRYK: There's so many good things. I mean, I think you've hit on a bunch of them already. Some of the work that we focus on in my research lab, we really focus on how games can help you recover from stress. This is a big area of research for us and a really big interest right now in the world that destroyed two things that kind of form stress in our lives. One is that we feel invested in something that's like ego involved. And the other is that we have a sense of uncontrolled ability about that thing. And so this could be something like a task. It's too difficult or an uncertain future or just feeling like you're being controlled by something else. And in the lab, we tend to induce those states and people to experimental manipulations. But right now, the whole world is basically a giant stress reduction. And some people are, people are feeling this. And so when we look at what helps us recover from stress, research has really shown that there's this forming things that we need to have to help us recover from stress. One is psychological detachment from the source of that stress. One is relaxation. One is experiencing mastery over challenges and one of the sense of exerting a little bit of control over our environment. And anyone who's a gamer would say, oh, well, gaming actually is really good at doing all those four things, whereas other forms of media might really be good at one or two of them. And so that's why it's really good for us to help us recover from a [unintelligible].

MG: Are you seeing this in your own home? You have a couple of kids, right?

REGAN MANDRYK: Yes, I have an eight year old and a 10 year old.

MG: Are they playing a lot of games in these times?

REGAN MANDRYK: Yes, they are. They are. I didn't talk about that at one of the things that we do study the social benefits of play. We've looked at how the relationships that you form in game can be as meaningful as those you form in the physical world and also how they can help combat loneliness are some of the studies that we've done. And I've seen that like playing out and even though I'm a researcher of games, I've been researching this for 20 years now, I have, you know, federal grants to research games they publish on this. I still sort of feel a little bit like a little bit worried that my kids might be playing too much or that means they should be doing something else. And so like every other parent, I'm sort of concerned about how much they're playing, but then I watch the quality of the what they're getting out of it. And they're doing things right now like they play Minecraft with their cousins who live in Vancouver, almost daily after their school work is done at the end of the day. And they weren't interacting with their cousins daily before this happened. But now they're building relationships. They talk about what's going on in games [unintelligible], but they also talk about other things that are going on around them and just kind of random conversation that they have.

MG: And they get what out of that do you think?

REGAN MANDRYK: They're getting social, social interaction. The need for socialization is one of our fundamental psychological needs. It's something that we have to satisfy in order to feel well, to have a sense of well-being. And so they're not able to get that, like your other guest said through, you know, sports or through school. Right now, and so they're getting that quality social interaction. And it actually doesn't matter so much what you might be interacting around. In the physical, we don't always sit down and have a conversation with people. Kids in particular aren't good at having a conversation with each other. They play together, they build Lego, they play sports, they do things together. And even adults do this, too. You know, we go see a show. You know, if you're in the world of dating, when you know you're dating someone new, you often don't- you might go for coffee, you might go for dinner, but often you go do something together so that you have something to converse about. And gaming does provide that. It provides kind of a scaffolded conversation, activity based communication.

MG: What about the negative concerns around this? Are we heard at the beginning again? 13 year old playing Grand Theft Auto, super violent game. How roads do we know anything about how violence impacts kids and teens? This has been discussed. It seems like for decades.

REGAN MANDRYK: Yeah, this has been a point of interest for researchers for a really long time. And I think the you know, as a general rule of thumb is that it's not that the games are the cause of violent behaviour or aggressive behaviour, but often if someone has aggressive tendencies to other means, they might be enacting those through gameplay. So a 13 year old might not feel comfortable kind of expressing their violence, the violence, the violent nature in other ways, but they might feel comfortable expressing that through gaming. So it's not really so much of a cause as it is a vehicle. And it's something that parents should be concerned about. And so they, as mentioned by your previous guests, should be looking at the rating systems. These exist that a 13 year old is playing games like Grand Theft Auto. That's not rated for that age group is something that should be considered. There are lots of games that are available for age groups that have, you know, Animal Crossing was mentioned, I mentioned Minecraft, even the game like Fortnights, the first person shooter game. But it's a great game for younger kids to play at night. Not little kids. But, you know, 10 year olds to play.

MG: There's also that social connection that you talked about in the social connection can be great, but it can also turn toxic. Have a listen to Nicole Smith. She recorded some of the harassment that she received while playing the game. Overwatch. It's not particularly pleasant stuff.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: This is my girls should not do anything. Do not play Overwatch. That ugly pimple ridden face whore. [Beep] play a proper character. 45 hours, you still suck. I guess girls just suck at videogames in general you [beep].

VOICE 2: Excuse me.

VOICE 3: [Unintelligible] didn't stutter.

MG: What is the industry doing to combat this kind of stuff and to clamp down on us?

REGAN MANDRYK: Yeah, toxicity is a big problem and it's something that the game industry is actually very concerned about. Game companies are working actively on this. Because if their environments are toxic, and our work has shown that these toxic environments don't lead to the social capital that ends up producing loneliness. This is the kind of the something that blocks that social benefit of play is a toxic game environment. But they're really interested because it will drive players away. In particular, will drive entire segments of the population away because toxicity in game environments often expressed in slurs that are racialized or gender based. And so here, if you're kind of, if a whole segment of the population is choosing not to play games because of the harassment that they're receiving, then that's a problem for the business model of the game companies, not just to mention the social problems that make them go along. The game companies are very interested.

MG: Are they are they addressing it?

REGAN MANDRYK: Yes, they're trying to. But it's a very challenging problem. The kinds of things that they've been doing in the past have been really focussed on kind of like karma based systems banning players and giving players. Basically, if someone reports them, they get banned or they have such a severe disadvantage in the game that it's not really worth their while anymore. Some of the more recent work and the work that we're doing is really focussed on that computational modelling. So can we sense toxicity before it happens? So you can sense it while it's happening, but can you even sense it? Can you predict that it's going to happen so that you can stop it in its tracks? And we do this by looking at the speech signal, the quality of the audio signal of the person that's speaking, not just the content of what they're saying. And if we can predict it kind of before it happens, you can kind of stopped dead in its tracks.

MG: That's so interesting. Just we only have a couple of seconds left. What's the top game that you're playing right now in these lockdown times?

REGAN MANDRYK: I'm playing Fortnight.

MG: You're playing fortnight. With the kids, too?

REGAN MANDRYK: Yes, I play with my friends. I also play with my 10 year old. I got into it so that I could do something with him that was kind of driven by him, where he felt in control. And he was teaching me a few things. And so now that's what I'm playing.

MG: Regan, it's great to talk to you. Thank you.

REGAN MANDRYK: Thanks for having me.

MG: Regan Mandryk is a computer science professor at the University of Saskatchewan. She was in Saskatoon. Coming up in 90 seconds. We take it's porcelain presence for granted. You will hear why some people are saying in this moment the public bathrooms need a pandemic re-do. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. We're back in a minute and a half. Stay with us.

As COVID-19 restrictions lift, some worry public restrooms will remain inaccessible

Guests: Steven Soifer, James Walsh, Lezlie Lowe

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Toilet paper is a hot item under lockdown venture beyond your private throne, though, and you may discover a different commode concern. Most public washrooms are closed right now and holding it is not an option for many Canadians. So some have had to improvise. Here is Montreal truck driver Stephen Kastrantas.

SOUNDCLIP

While we're on the road, before we leave, we've got to make sure we got lots of water, lots of food. We need a little bucket for pee pee and we've got to do because everywhere we go, it's kind of closed. And even if we get to our customers, they won't let us in. It's a different ballgame than what it was maybe like two months ago.

MG: Yes, a bucket. Not exactly a long term solution. It's hard to avoid the fact, though, that public washrooms make it difficult to avoid one another. And that has some people thinking it's time for a redesign. Steven Soifer is the co-founder of the American Restroom Association. He's a professor of social work at the University of Mississippi. Steven, good morning.

STEVEN SOIFER: Good morning there, Matt.

MG: When you go into a public washroom, what's the first thing you notice?

STEVEN SOIFER: How many people are in it — and the more people, the more difficult that can be for me and a lot of other people to go because of shy bladder syndrome or other conditions that make it hard for people to basically pee in a social situation.

MG: That's what shy bladder syndrome is?

STEVEN SOIFER: Yes. Yes. But now there's you know, it's sort of a nice to be home because you don't have to deal with the public. But as various states and provinces are loosening social restrictions like Ontario, if not today, they're talking about the plan. You're going to find that going out in public, challenging them in terms of finding public restrooms.

MG: I think people only think of public restrooms if they need to use them. They may not think much of the design of them. They may not think of the location of them until suddenly, as you say, you gotta go. You gotta go. What are some of the design flaws that might give someone pause about using a public toilet at any time, but particularly during a global pandemic?

STEVEN SOIFER: Well, for men in particular, with the gang style toilets, you have the urinal situation. And you know, some public restrooms are well-designed and they have nice dividers between the urinals. Others, the worst kind of the- well, there aren't many troughs left, but the Lobell urinals, as they call them, without dividers between them, which can be quite intimidating.

MG: Intimidating and also perhaps not particularly hygienic.

STEVEN SOIFER: Exactly. I mean, the reason there are dividers. Most people don't realise that it's not so much for privacy, but it's to prevent the splash back affect. You know, you walk into a restroom, see these dividers. There's often corrosion on them from the urine. So that means you're getting splashed back to, as someone standing next to someone at those urinals. So, you know, essentially we're going to have to see probably the blocking off of every other urinal in social situations.

MG: You talk about solutions and I've used this term - pardon my language - social pistancing. What does that mean? I don't know that I've ever said that on the radio before. What does that mean?

STEVEN SOIFER: Yeah, well, if you're supposed to keep six foot distance from the person next to you, you know that the idea of people that design these public bathrooms is to get as many commodes or urinals in as possible. It doesn't leave much space for social pistancing sitting. So the idea is to provide more space, basically.

MG: And you do that by reducing the number of urinals that would be in there in that space.

STEVEN SOIFER: Yes, the idea would be to block off every other urinal. The picture with that slogan on it is a picture of urinals with every other one having a plastic bag on it.

MG: We're talking about urinals that men would use. What about more broadly if you take a look at, there's been a push, for example, for general neutral exam through us. Is that something that, in the great reopening, we are going to need more of?

STEVEN SOIFER: I think so. I mean, the idea is having fully enclosed water closets and lids on the toilets. One of the things that we find over [cutting] lots of toilets with our covers.

MG: And why do you why do you need a lid?

STEVEN SOIFER: Well, the experts tell us that the toilet plume will extend perhaps six feet into the air. [Unintelligible] can hold the coronavirus for 30 days. So you can imagine the problems.

MG: That's the toilet plume.

STEVEN SOIFER: The toilet plume. I think have. No toilet seat covers, fling closed closets for people and getting around the whole issue of gendered toilet is the way to go for the future.

MG: Are there cities or jurisdictions that have figured this out before we got into this moment, that have again taken the initiative to improve something that many of us don't give a second thought to until we actually need to use it.

STEVEN SOIFER: Yes, I mean, there are cities that have passed ordnances for gender neutral toilets and even ordinances for potty parity, more toilets for women in public situations. So I think these are, you know, New York. Seattle, maybe Toronto. I'm not 100 percent sure.

MG: On this point. How important is it that we get this right? If we're talking about reopening society. Why do we need to have better public toilets?

It's just important that people. Are able to go to put public toilets and feel safe. I think that even before COVID-19, we had a situation where lots of people were avoiding public toilets because of germ phobia, for example. And so if people are able to, you know, feel safer in these situations. It will provide a a gentler reopening for toilets in society.

MG: James Walsh has been listening into this conversation. Is the vice president of product management for American Standard. You might recognise that brand name from the back of your toilet seat. James, good morning to you.

JAMES WALSH: Good morning.

MG: What do you hear from your clients who might perhaps have concerns about their ability to meet the public restroom needs during a pandemic?

JAMES WALSH: What we're seeing is we're seeing a very heightened interest in what we refer to as our Selectronic range of faucets and fixtures — and that is sensor faucets, sensor flush products, that the consumer or user doesn't have to touch the product to flush it or operate the faucet itself and wash. We're also seeing, and this isn't necessarily related to the commercial bathroom, but we're seeing a heightened awareness or request for what we refer to as SpaLet bidet seats, which wash you as opposed to using paper. And the thought of bringing that into the commercial arena. The gentleman, I believe Steven, makes some very good points about distancing in the bathroom itself. The public bathroom itself, I think and anticipate that you may see some new design layouts where they are going to be not only distancing urinals and toilets, but also lavatories themselves.

MG: When you walk into a public washroom, what do you - this is your business, in many ways - what are you hoping that you'll find?

JAMES WALSH: Well, we're hoping to find that you're going to use more of these touch free products, so you're limiting the touchpoints that you're going to see more distancing with the fixtures themselves. So you're not, you know, as you mentioned, you're not shoulder to shoulder with a stranger as you're going to the bathroom. The question about toilet seats and lids is a tricky one, because I don't think simply adding a lid to a public toilet is the answer, because what we find is that people don't want to touch the toilet seat. Even the rim. People don't want to touch, even if it's a manual flush valve, the flush valve. To flush the toilet, you'll see people — we call them kick flushers — where they'll kick that handle to flush the toilet. So I think the idea of seats in lids, we're really going to have to rethink that seat in a public application.

MG: Is this going to be I mean, the challenge for your industry to try to figure out what this technology is going to look like in a time when, I mean, at the best of times, people don't want to touch the seat or the handle. But now, because of a public health crisis, people really don't want to do that.

JAMES WALSH: That's correct. I think what you're what we see is all of our products are measured, particularly toilets, for droplets escaping the lid. And we limit the droplets there. We're going to have to address that. We design our urinals to limit any splash back. That's very much at the forefront of our product development. Combined with the fact that these fixtures are being asked to use less than less water. The need for urinals to completely cover and scour and clean out the urinal itself is going to be even more heightened today.

MG: It sounds even more expensive than what people already have, though.

JAMES WALSH: I'm sorry.

MG: It sounds it more a much more expensive than what exists right now.

JAMES WALSH: But that's the trade-off. When you talked about sensor type products, they are better for the user. They're better for cleanliness, but they're more expensive than manual type. So I think there is going to be a trade-off of what we refer to as value engineering vs. more hygienic solutions that the public is asking for.

MG: Just before I let you go, the needing part is is important. How close do you think you are to be able to build an outfit? You know, the ideal public washroom that meets the public health needs and concerns that we have right now.

JAMES WALSH: I think we've got a lot of the pieces today. We've got full ranges of electronic flux valves, faucets out there. We've got urinals that reduce the type of splashing. We have developed an anti-microbial ever clean surface for our vitreous chinaware products that would be toilet urinals and laboratories that inhibit the growth of stain and odour causing mould, mildew and bacteria. The question is, how quickly can we get into things such as automatic sensing seats that open and close and potentially flush the toilet when it senses the user coming toward it? So I think those are some of the challenges that we have. But we we have some of the essence, a lot of the elements out there right now. It's a question of getting them installed in these public bathrooms per the requirements of the society.

MG: James, good to speak with you. Thank you.

JAMES WALSH: Thank you.

MG: James Walsh, vice president of product management for American Standard. Steven Soifer, you've been listening in is the cost the thing that's going to prevent this from moving forward?

STEVEN SOIFER: Partially, I mean, what we find is that businesses in the U.S. in particular, maybe to some degree Canada, unlike European counterparts, don't take the customers seriously. You know, if you go into a nice restaurant, you want nice bathrooms and it doesn't seem to register in our cost saving society that, you know, if you design your bathrooms in a chintzy way, that it's going to affect the customer's experience and be bad for your bottom line. So that's one thing we have to overcome. Listening to, you know, the prior speaker, the other thing that occurred to me is door handles. You know, people hate touching door handle in general. And a lot of them are made out of stainless steel. And the latest studies show that the coronavirus may last up to 72 hours on stainless steel. So we have to figure out how people can get in and out of bathrooms without touching the door handle.

MG: It's a big challenge.

STEVEN SOIFER: Oh, it is. There are designs out there, more in public venues like airports where you walk in and there's a corridor and you can go left the right to the different bathroom, not touching the door for men and women or these S-shaped entry ways. So ideally, that's the way to go. But of course, that's very expensive.

MG: Steve it's good to speak to you. We'll have to leave it there. But this is the kind of thing that I think a lot of people will be thinking about as they try to figure out how to reopen society and how we're going to get out and go when we're out. Steven, thank you.

STEVEN SOIFER: Sure.

MG: Steven Soifer, the co-founder of the American Restroom Association, he was an Oxford, Mississippi. You think about it. I mean, imagine a public toilet. What's the image that comes to mind? Do you see a clean place for some quiet relief or is it a dank and gross space that you want to avoid? For many Canadians, probably the latter. My next guest says that that, like Steven saying, has to change. Lezlie Lowe is the author of No Place to Go How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs. Lezlie, good morning to you.

LEZLIE LOWE: Good morning. How important is it to talk about something that people aren't generally talking about the public toilet when we're trying to figure out how to reopen our society?

LEZLIE LOWE: I think it's really crucial and I think it's a huge hurdle to overcome because so many of us do not talk about public toilets. And I think that we have a make do attitude in our country and generally in the US and the UK as well, where we sort of go about our days and we know our routes and we know where we can go and we think, okay, this is fine and we move ahead. We don't think about public toilets, we don't talk about public toilets, and we don't have even government departments that are designated, as, you know, for the provision of public toilets. They're sort of crammed into Parks and Rec or crammed into other departments inside municipalities. And we're not taking a very serious look at this at all and definitely not post-COVID, as far as I've seen.

MG: How the Canadian cities rate when it comes to providing a place that's clean that you'd actually want to go in to to use the washroom.

LEZLIE LOWE: Well, I think that depends where you are. First of all, some cities have public toilets, very, very few. But some cities have them. I think more what you're looking at is who you are. So if you are a person who appears to be experiencing homelessness, you can have trouble accessing a customer bathroom in a café, for example, whereas I, who look like a Middle-Class White woman, can walk in, pretty much walk and use the toilet. And if I have to buy a muffin to do that, I can buy the muffin to do that. So publicly accessible toilets. It varies quite a bit. Public toilets, which are defined as sort of on street free available to anybody when they need it. They're very few and far between in Canada.

MG: Are there cities that have done a good job around the world in providing a public washroom?

LEZLIE LOWE: Am I right? I wrote in my book about Portland, Oregon, which has a contraption called the Portland Loo, which is an on street accessible, off-grid public toilet that the city actually designed. It decided it wanted to improve its bathroom provision and it designed and started building these loos. And they're fantastic. They fit a bike. You don't have to lock your bike up. They have portable water on the outside. And so they do very well. Those are open. And you see people in Portland of all ages, all different kinds of people just using them. A normal part of the environment?

MG: Why haven't other cities replicated that? Is it about cost?

LEZLIE LOWE: I think cost is a factor because any time a public toilet goes in, I keep on top of reading when public toilets are going into various cities. You always see commentary on social media and on news stories about the cost. So for listeners who don't know a typical automated public toilet, there are a few of them in Toronto. There's one on Queens Quay. People know that one.

MG: Down by the water fountain.

Yes. They cost about a quarter of a million dollars. And that's because they're really little houses. You know, they have hydro, they have sewage, they have water. They are highly technologically advanced pieces of infrastructure that we're putting on our city street. And they cost a lot of money. People, A, don't see that as a reasonable cost, but they really don't see the value in a public toilet. And Steven Soifer kind of talked about that in Canada. In the U.S., we really don't see that value in that public service in having people being able to access that service on the street. When they're walking around, when they're biking around, when they're shopping in stores are going to visit friends.

MG: Do you think that will change coming out of this crisis? I mean, one of the stories that we're hearing a lot is of the truckers who are hauling around the things that we need, who we spoke with. One has to have a bucket and a truck because there are no public toilets for him to stop at. So is this a moment in which we will rethink something that before this moment we didn't even really want to think about at all?

LEZLIE LOWE: I hope that this is sort of the breaking point for us where we start to realize the importance of these things. And, you know, I'm a practicing journalist and I wrote a piece this week about the fact that Ontario, you know, Ontario is going to open up very soon. It looks like other provinces are taking these tentative steps. That's not going to mean we're going into malls. It's not going to mean we're going into sporting venues. It's going to mean we're going to be allowed out on the street to practise safe social distancing. But we're going to be out. We're going to be able to do, in Ontario, I know you can do. You can buy from stores who have a street face in front. That is kind cause a massive problem, because what we're going to find is all of those publicly accessible toilets that so many of us relied on for so long in stores, in rec centres and libraries, all of those bathrooms are going to be shut down. And that's because of COVID. And people are going to realise that they cannot navigate the city the way they used to navigate the city because those are not available. And what I hope is that translates into people starting to talk about public bathroom accessibility and availability. And I hope that that causes a change. It's not a quick change. I think, you know, right now, port-a-potties would be a fantastic idea with hand hygiene stations. That's a great idea, because if we want people out, you know, buying a coffee and going for a distance to walk with a friend, they can't be out for more than a few hours without a bathroom. Nobody can.

MG: You just wonder whether this is going to be enough to get over that $250,000 hurdle. I mean, I'm in the city of Toronto and there was a huge fight here about that. You've seen that replicated elsewhere as well. Whether that will be enough to square that figure with the need, if I can put it that way.

LEZLIE LOWE: Right. I think that what we need to do is look at what we want as as a society. You know, what do cities want? And cities talk a lot about livability and cities talk a lot about being pedestrian friendly and cyclist friendly and urging people to use active transportation. And we do this not because it promotes quality of life, but also because fundamentally the alternative is more costly. People driving in their cars is more costly than people using active transportation in the end. And so when we talk about all these kind of buzzworthy things like livability, it's funny that we actually completely forget the concept of how public toilets tie into that. So I would say if cities want to be more livable, if if downtown cores want that, want to be walkable, we want our cities to be walkable and cyclical, we have to have this infrastructure. And it is, I mean, it's part of the common right. An argument I make in my book that we expect benches and we expect trash cans and we expect street lights and we expect well-maintained sidewalks. But somehow we do not expect public toilets. And they're even more important than all those other things in terms of making us able to use our cities properly.

MG: Perhaps especially now. And that's a compelling argument. Lezlie, it's great to talk to you. Thank you.

LEZLIE LOWE: Thanks.

MG: Leslie Lowe is a freelance journalist and author of No Place to Go Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs. She was in Halifax. This is The Current. On CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. I want to tell you something. That is where we left off and we asked you to pick up the story to remind you we did this experiment a few weeks back. Writer and poet Michael Lista began a story and we wanted you to finish it in a minute or less. Have a listen to Michael. And then a reading of the story ending sent in by Travis Moore.

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VOICE 1: The girl threw the cup with the string attached to the neighbour boy. She'd made a telephone that was just for them and had a cup of her own that she could talk to the boy through. The cup landed on the boy's bedroom window sill. Their parents had grounded them both, but she could still see him in his blue room with his Mickey Mouse clock on the wall. And she would wave and he would wave back. Sometimes he would dress up as Superman just for himself, and the girl would see him in his blue suit and his red cape and thought that he looked sad and brave. They used to play in the willow tree on their street, swinging from its long sweep branches and laughing until the street lights would come on and their moms would call them home. The cup landed with a thump. The boy opened his window and put the cup to his ear. The girl pulled the line tight, almost tugging him out onto the laneway. Her voice travelled like a song over the string. I want to tell you something, she said.

VOICE 2: What is it? He inquired into the twilight. I know who ratted on us for breaking curfew. It was your older brother. It had been a mystery who told on them for sneaking out Saturday night, landing each of them grounded in the confines of their respective bedrooms. Are you sure? I was in the living room when your mother called mine. I heard them talking. It was definitely him. The boy Huff does his shoulders fell defeated in betrayal. He's always tattling on me. I wish I could get revenge, he muttered. The girl's grip tightened on the cup. You can. She exclaimed. From here I can see into his bedroom window, too. He's been looking at some pretty naughty things on the internet at night. Really? Yeah, she said. You should tell your mother to check his browser history. The boy gazed back across the abyss of the laneway at her as a smile crept across his face. I'll be back in a bit, he said, placing his can atop the windowsill. Then he straightened his cape, looking back at the girl whose glowing face now matched his venturesome grin, he reached for the bedroom door knob. Mum!

MG: All of these story endings have been so different. It's fantastic. This is what happens when you turn the ending over to you. Thank you, Travis Moore, for that. We'll hear another story ending a bit later on in the program. The news is next. And then four days on, followed by 10 days off, a unique idea, forgetting society back to work. You'll hear all about the 4-10 proposal when the current returns. I'm Matt Galloway. We're back in six minutes.

4 days at work, 10 days in lockdown would restart economy amid fears of COVID-19 resurgence, says economist

Guests: Eran Yashiv, Erin Bromage, Karin Marley

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, this pandemic has reignited debate over a universal basic income. Is now the time? In 30 minutes, you'll hear from Andrew Yang, who made that the centrepiece of his campaign to be the president of the United States. But first, how does working four days every two weeks sound to you?

[Music: Theme].

MG: Little by little, Canadian provinces are starting to open up with experts and authorities searching for the perfect formula to balance lives and livelihoods. A group of researchers think they may have a solution. Eran Yashiv is a professor of economics at Tel Aviv University and the London School of Economics Centre for Macro Economics joins us on the line now. Good morning.

ERAN YASHIV: Good morning.

MG: Tell me about this model that you have developed, the 10-4 or 4-10, depending on how you look at it.

ERAN YASHIV: Yes. The model was actually developed by biologists at the Weitzman Institute of Science in Israel Orie Alon and Ron Meloe, they discovered a characteristic, a biological feature of the virus, which has a latency period. Apparently when you get infected, you are for about three days, possibly longer. Non infectious. That is, you don't infect others. And then you become very quickly at- you get to your peak infectiousness for a few days. So the idea they came up with is to have people work for four days and then stay under lockdown - a relatively strict lockdown of the kind we did see everywhere, including in Canada in recent weeks - to stay 10 days in lockdown. That is four days work, 10 days lockdown. I've been working with them on the economic implications of this, which basically allow people to work 40 percent of work days because you work forr work days out of 10 work days every two weeks. And the idea also relies on on the division of the relevant population into two parts. Group A works for one week, group B works the other week and so on. The alternate. This brings back production and consumption for four days out of every week.

MG: So let me just walk through because some people could be confusing because you have the three day sort of latency period when you're not spreading the virus. You could work for four days, then you go home. Are you still working during that 10 day lockdown period?

ERAN YASHIV: Well, if you can work remotely, obviously you will continue to work. The whole point is that not everybody can work remotely. And even if they work remotely, it's often better that they are physically present. So everybody will, if healthy and of work under lockdown as people have done so far. But this enables for like normal days, in fact, more than normal. You can work long hours during those four days that you're out. You can also do shopping, etc.

MG: And the belief is that after those 10 days of being locked down, you could come back to work. And even if at the beginning you had been exposed to COVID-19, you're not going to be spreading it because you have spent ten days at home.

ERAN YASHIV: Yes. Although we I should emphasize one point, and that is that people who are actually infected and know are infected are not supposed to join in the scheme. That is, they're supposed to stay in lockdown or be hospitalized anyway. So if you do know at any stage, whether in the four days or the 10 days that you are ill, then you go out of this scheme till you recover and then you're basically free to participate again.

MG: How would a city or a country determine who goes to work when this seems like, if not an impossible a very difficult logistical hurdle?

ERAN YASHIV: Yes. Yes. Let me stress first that this applies at any level it can be at the firm or an institution level. For example, the largest Spanish supermarket chains, [unintelligible] has adopted this strategy. We are talking with Motorola about adopting this strategy. But it can also apply to a city, to a region, to a county and to a whole country. Now, how do you divide? Well, if it's a big entity like a region or a big city or a country, you find some mechanism of assigning, say, purple colour or too week A and green collar to weak B and households, adults and children are divided into these two colours. They can wear them or they can flag them. So this can actually be inspected everywhere, if you belong to your working group for that particular week. And the division could be almost random if it's a really a big entity, say by alphabetical order or by some draw, et cetera, if it's a more targeted institution, then presumably the management or the human resources department can actually designate people according to the jobs they carry out, their function in the firm and so on or the institution and tried to get a balance over the two different groups.

MG: How do you enforce it? Because the quadrant, the lockdown seems to be the key part here, that somebody goes to work for four days and they can work hard, but then they need to go home. They can't be out because that, presumably, could destabilize this whole arrangement. So how do you enforce the lockdown part of this?

ERAN YASHIV: Yes, in this sense, the simulation that we have done to see that this is an effective strategy rely on a lockdown, as strict as the lockdowns seen in Western Europe or in New York City have been in recent weeks. So you have to enforce that. It turns out that so far it has been enforceable, that these people have complied. In fact, various services I've seen have shown that people would even require more stringent measures to be applied. So people themselves are concerned about what's going on. So what I mean is you need that level of control, not nothing more strict and but obviously not more lax than that.

MG: So you take police enforcement or some sort of monitoring in terms of people's actions and people's behaviours.

ERAN YASHIV: I would say more of things like police in the kind of way it has been done in major places, and especially if you tag people with colour or something. I mean, carry the colour of the week where you are out or in, then you are easily recognisable. Yes, I agree that it may be tempting to go out once you are partially released from lockdown, but the whole thing should be compared to complete lockdown. That's the alternative that we are comparing to. Or the other alternative is other ways of targeted lockdowns where you target specific population groups. But that's even more difficult both to identify those subgroups and monitor them because of lack of testing. That is no country that I know of. Probably not even South Korea has testing on such a optimal scale that you can really recognise subpopulations that you want to target and say these guys can go out, these others cannot. It's difficult to identify. Is difficult, therefore, to monitoring and enforce. This scheme that we are proposing is not predicated on testing people and telling who is allowed and who is not allowed.

MG: As cities and jurisdictions try to figure out how to reopen, what do you see as the economic benefit of a scheme like this?

ERAN YASHIV: Well, first of all, it, as I said, offers something like roughly 40 percent of work days, assuming that the normal work week is five days a week and we are speaking about bunches of 2 weeks or 14 days. This allows, if you like, predictability and smoothing of both production and consumption. You can plan ahead knowing that this is the schedule. Both firms can plan their production patterns and households can plan their consumption patterns if they know this is like a regular predictable schedule, not something like on and off. And without living in this fear that, well, maybe there'll be a resurgence and we'll be called back to lock down and so on. This is like a more steady path. But let me also say that this is not something, this is not the new normal. This is not something that we envisage for a very long time. The whole idea is that this way, the famous are the reproduction number that tells you how many people on the average, each person infects, that this all will go below 1 and will and then therefore the pandemic will be eradicated. Just so we're not proposing an economic system. We are proposing something that should be compared or to complete lockdowns or to lockdowns that are very difficult to implement in practise.

MG: Just before I let you go, we just have a couple of seconds. You mentioned that the Spanish supermarket chain that's using this is. Are there any other jurisdictions or anybody else that's testing this?

ERAN YASHIV: Yes. The Austrian education system, the Austrian school system is about to start this on May 18th, just in a few days time. There is the Israel branch of the high tech company Applied Materials that is either doing it or are about to do that. And I may have mentioned that we are speaking with Motorola about doing it in big branches. And actually we keep getting e-mails from various places. One place, for example, some hospital in Los Angeles connected to UCLA have told us that even before they heard of our staff, they implemented basically this program. For their physicians, residents and so on, and it worked quite well.

MG: Eran Yashiv, good to speak with you. Thank you.

ERAN YASHIV: Thank you.

MG: Eran Yashiv is a professor of economics at Tel Aviv University and the London School of Economics, Centre for Macro Economics. He was in Tel Aviv. Reopening the economy, no matter how you do it, comes with significant risks. And my next guest wants people to know just what those risks are and how they can protect themselves. Erin Bromage is an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Erin, good morning to you.

ERIN BROMAGE: Good morning to you.

MG: When you make the 10-4 model you just heard about, is that the way to approach the reopening?

ERIN BROMAGE: You know, it's a it's a really interesting approach. You know, it's all about, you know, working on the averages. You know, like Yashiv has said, you know, you're looking at, you know, this infectious period, latent period into infectious period of somewhere between one and five days. And, you know, they've landed on, you know, roughly four to be the important one. And then we know that the majority of people, if they are infected and become sick, start showing up, becoming symptomatic, you know, within days. So it's working with the biology to try to come up with a feasible way to get back to work. So, you know, the biology is there. It's just hard when you start thinking about it's working on averages. Some people show symptoms as soon as a day after being exposed and others are, you know, much longer. So, you know, there's a risk that, you know, is there a better plan at this stage? I'm not really sure.

MG: The biology is so important. And you wrote a blog post that ended up going all around the world. In it you said if you don't solve the biology, the economy won't recover. What's the biggest concern that you have when it comes to this? You know, the great reopening is people are calling it.

ERIN BROMAGE: Yes, so I mean, everyone wants to get back to work. And that's me included. You know, I miss my classroom. I know. I miss, you know, me doing my research in the lab. I want to be there. And there's a lot of people that are pretty [unintelligible]. Getting back out and doing it. And I'm not afraid of this virus. And, you know, they can have that opinion, that's up to them. But, you know, if we don't get the biology under control, as in get the outbreak under control, you may open your business or go back to work. And what if all your employees get sick? Your business is shut down. But even more importantly, there are a substantial group of people in the population that are just worried. And if they're worried about their own health and they therefore don't participate in consumption, like going to restaurants, you know, going to grocery stores, doing sort of the extra bits and pieces that we used to do with normal daily life. If they're not participating in the economy, the businesses are going to founda anyway. So we have to get the biology under control. Whether you believe this is a risk or a real concern or not, it's just a fact that we need to get everyone participating again.

MG: Let's walk quickly through some of the things that you point out in this post. One is, what do we know about where people are getting sick?

ERIN BROMAGE: So in the countries that did really good contact tracing, you know, they had the public health systems in place to actually look at this. What they were finding is the vast majority of infections are happening inside your own home. But the virus doesn't open doors and doesn't come through walls. So in order for you to get infected in your house, someone had to bring it inside and bring it into your home. And so then when we stop looking outside of the home about where these community transmission is happening, we see that, you know, the majority of them, you know, in these essential employees. So in the workplace and prior to the lockdowns and things like that, it was happening at restaurants. We just saw the really large outbreak in South Korea with a nightclub. I think there's a 100, 130 people that have been infected from one single nightclub. And then it's with, you know, gatherings such as, you know, choir practise, funerals, weddings. Anywhere that brings people close together in an indoor environment where there's a lot of speaking, touching, yelling, screaming. It just ups the risk that people face in those environments.

MG: You have a formula for risk. Dose plus time.

ERIN BROMAGE: So, you know, I've had a lot of people sort of think that you just need to be exposed to the virus to get sick. And there is very few pathogens that I'm aware of that just being exposed to a single bacteria or a single very own leads to infection. You usually need more. And it can be hundreds. It can be thousands, tens of thousands, depending on which bug you're talking about. And so we don't have the number for this one yet, but we have a good idea based on previous corona viruses. But the numbers not just not important. It's just you can't- you can get it all in once by a cough or sneeze from somebody gets infected. They put a huge amount of virus out at one time. Maybe someone coughed into that hands. You shake the hands and then you rub your eye later. That could be enough in just one single dose to get it. And so time is not really involved in that case. But most other infections, if you're getting exposed to a low amounts of the virus, you know, over minutes, over hours in your workplace where you get a little bit. Twenty here, twenty there, twenty there. And it builds up and hits that number. We're being exposed leads to infection. And then that's when you are now infected and potentially can come sick.

MG: And so given that, how do we go about figuring out how we can start to let people out of lockdown, how we can start to be, whether it's in a workplace or out on the streets, shopping, being together, knowing what you know about how this spreads, but also where it's spreading?

ERIN BROMAGE: So, you know, we can't stay, you know, locked away forever for longer. You know, it's really we have to get back to it. So part of the reason of me writing these posts that I've been doing for the last twelve weeks is just helping people navigate what the new normal looks like so that they can actually reduce their risk with whatever they're doing. And we know it's really simple. You know, you just ply apply a few principles. You've got to limit your contacts. And that was the plan that was just brought up with your previous speaker was, you know, if you've got half the workforce coming for four days and then a different group coming four days and then, well, it looks like it's in thirds, you know, coming every four days or so, you're now limiting the amount of people that are in your workplace, which reduces those contacts, but that can also be applied in just daily life. You're not wanting to spend a lot of time speaking to people, you know, in social situations. You know, you definitely want don't want to come in close contact with lots of people regularly because that just increases the number of contacts that you have and the chance that is spreading. So just basic things like, you know, limiting contacts in a day is really, really important if you're putting yourself in situations where there is lots of other people around you. Be it in a, you know, a train, be it in a commuter bus or something like that. You know, if it feels like there's a lot of people in there, just wait for the next one to come along. If you have to be in it, then invest in a good mask. You know, I know mosques are controversial and some people don't like wearing them. But, you know, the data is pretty conclusive with this, that if everyone with them, it lowers the amount of respiratory emissions into the environment. And if we do that, we start getting down below that number that gets people infected. And, you know, it's just a common social conscience to actually get that to let us solve this problem.

MG: Just in a couple of seconds. Are you confident, given the impatience that we all have, we want to get back to our lives, that we'll take those precautions, that we'll take those steps?

ERIN BROMAGE: You know, I hope the majority of people do. I do have confidence in people's better nature and having the best interests of not just themselves, but of the community in mind, too. So if they're going with that attitude like this is a national problem, then, you know, I am confident that we as a community and to make it scientists can do this.

MG: Erin, good to speak with you. Thank you.

ERIN BROMAGE: Thank you very much for having me on the show.

MG: Erin Bromage is an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. We've been thinking a lot about online education this week, both for school aged kids who are struggling with it and now post-secondary students who are bracing for September in classes that will not be perhaps in class, but online at The Current. Senior producer Karin Marley is here to sift through some of your mail. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning. We had some comments earlier this week from kids talking about what they think of their parents teaching at home. And I'm not sure I haven't quite gathered up the courage to ask my girls. But, maybe tonight. So we heard from many parents. This is Virginia Abbott in New Westminster, B.C. She wrote: I'm fortunate that I can work from home, but managing work and my kids has been a struggle. My eight year old daughter is keen and her teacher is amazing. My 13 year old son, on the other hand, very much misses the social aspects of the classroom. It takes much more of my time to ensure he does his work and is not on his device all day. In the first three or four weeks. I made up schedules for learning, but they quickly fell apart. It didn't take long before we were irritated with each other, as now I am their teacher, their mother and social circle. I have now finally had to hire someone to help with my son's schooling so I can concentrate on my own job.

MG: Jane Volk writes from Toronto I have a grade six and grade four child at home for us. Online learning is a roller coaster of success and frustration. Our big goal is to navigate this pandemic, a stress free and mindful of our mental health as we can. And if that journey does not include formal school, that's okay. If children miss a few months of school, it it's not going to have long lasting impacts on their success in life.

KARIN MARLEY: Noel Mesome is a Grade nine and 10 English teacher in rural Nova Scotia. She writes: I found that throughout the pandemic I might have 30 percent of my students engaged in the learning and it's the same ones who were engaged when we were in the school building. The difference that I see is when we were at school, students were penalized for missing work and somewhat pulled their socks up. I by no means think that they should be penalized for not engaging in the home learning. But I do think that if we have a new outlook in the fall, we need to develop something that will hold them accountable.

KARIN MARLEY: We also heard from listeners who enjoyed our conversation this week about playing more board games during the pandemic. Patricia James from Lively, Ontario writes: My son and I have a game of Scrabble most nights. He lives in a high rise in Toronto. I am widowed and live alone. He calls me on my landline around 11:15 p.m. I put the phone on speaker, set up the game on my cell phone, and we chat as we play. And by the time we finish, usually a very close game, I'm ready for bed and sleep well.

KARIN MARLEY: And finally, this from David Lawn in Waterloo, Ontario: Well, while I've always enjoyed chess, though, I'm terrible at it. There is one game I fell in love with about 30 years ago: Oware. It is, as far as I know, the oldest board game on earth having originated with African tribesmen thousands of years ago. I was introduced to it while serving overseas in the army and quickly fell in love with the beauty of the game. Both of a well-made board and of the moves. Unlike many games such as chess, which are based on warfare, a worry is based on farming. The players try to harvest their own seeds while they disrupt their advertisers adversary's harvest.

MG: For people who've never played this, it's a beautiful game.

KARIN MARLEY: Yes, I was looking at the board this morning. It looks gorgeous.

MG: Now you have something else to play while you're stuck at home. Karin, thank you.

KARIN MARLEY: Thank you.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer. If there's anything you hear on the program that you want to comment on, get in touch. Reach us through the Web site. cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can find us on Facebook or on Twitter. We are @TheCurrentCBC. Coming up, a pivotal moment for the universal basic income. A former U.S. presidential candidate will make the case. You'll hear from Andrew Yang when we come back in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

Former Democratic primary candidate Andrew Yang on universal basic income;

Guests: Andrew Yand, Sheila Regehr, Ken Boessenkool

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

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First, let me say America. It's great to be back on the debate stage. I'm so excited, I want to give every American $1000 a month.

MG: That's Andrew Yang, entrepreneur turned presidential candidate at the start of a Democratic primary debate in New Hampshire on February. In February, he was only sort of joking there when he talked about mailing at $1000 a month. Andrew Yang started his campaign with virtually no name recognition, but he outlasted governors and members of Congress on the campaign trail, in large part due to the popularity of that idea. $1000 a month to every American. He called them freedom dividends. Andrew Yang dropped out of the race soon after that debate. But the idea of a universal basic income has taken on a new life since this pandemic has put millions of people out of work. As part of our season long series, The Fix, we are asking whether a universal basic income could or should be part of the solution to recover from this financial crisis and build a better future. We'll look to Canada in just a moment, but first, I'm joined by Andrew Yang. Andrew Yang, good morning.

ANDREW YANG: Good morning. Good to be here.

MG: Great to have you. What is it like to campaign for months on the idea of a thousand dollar cheques for Americans and then see your government start mailing out relief cheques?

ANDREW YANG: Well, certainly these are the worst circumstances one can imagine. We're seeing 10 years of change in 10 weeks. And the trends I was concerned about are now appearing in a very compressed timeframe in terms of people being sent home and not having jobs to go to.

MG: And we know that people are struggling, around the world, to make ends meet because as you say, they've been sent home with no job to go to. How much different would the situation look for Americans? Do you think if there were a universal basic income in place when this crisis hit?

ANDREW YANG: It would be infinitely better for millions of American families that right now don't know how they're going to put food on the table, pay rent, take care of basic household expenses and people would be much more likely to adhere to public health guidelines and guidance. Because right now if you can't pay your bills, your ability to shelter in place is very limited. So we're seeing the worst of the crisis in part because people don't have basic economic security in this kind of crisis.

MG: If people get 1000 dollars a month and don't want to, you know, run through the whole campaign that you were you were putting together. But if people get 1000 dollars a month, what does it do for the life that they lead?

ANDREW YANG: Well, it makes people stronger, healthier, mentally healthier, more optimistic, more secure in their future. It improves relationships. It's interesting that we actually look to Canada for data on this because you all had a basic income trial that lasted for years and that's exactly what people found in that town. That's exactly what people would find essentially anywhere. Anywhere this has been tried, the data shows very clearly that people become happier, healthier, more trusting, more optimistic, and it improves our way of life.

MG: How does it improve your optimism?

ANDREW YANG: Well, right now, 78 percent of Americans are living paycheque to paycheque, and there is a significant amount of stress that's tied up with that. It can be called a mindset of scarcity and it's been shown to decrease your functional IQ by 13 points, if you're not sure how you're going to pay your bills. We've all experienced this when you're trying to figure out how you can pay one thing and not pay another. It's not just stressful. That actually makes you less optimistic and even decreases your functional intelligence.

MG: What is your sense- if you look at the situation that your country is in right now - 20 million Americans lost their jobs in the month of April alone. There is the hope, I think, for many less people that those jobs will come back. What is your sense as to how many of those jobs will actually be there?

ANDREW YANG: Some economists put together a study just now to try and figure this out. And they found that almost half of these jobs that have been lost, over 30 million jobs, will not return. And that's very consistent with my my conversations with business leaders who are saying find out they're not going to rehire all these people. So you're looking at, easily, millions of jobs that are gone for good. And the question is what then? How are we going to prevent depression, scale unemployment? There are very few effective solutions that don't involve putting economic resources directly into people's hands. And the biggest misconception is that it will somehow mitigate work. It will create jobs because that money will go right back into local businesses in our communities every day.

MG: What are those business leaders told you about why they're not going to hire half the people that they laid off back?

ANDREW YANG: They just don't need them truly. When you look up and say, wait a minute. Are we really going to be in an expansion immediately? And everyone knows the answer is no. You're looking at a permanent drag on the economy so that in a recession they were going to fire people anyway. So the fact that they furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers, tens of thousands of workers, they're not going to want to bring them all back. It just doesn't make sense for their business. Right now, the government is going to subsidize the retention of many of these workers, but that's a stopgap truly, even if you subsidize that for six months or a year. After that time period elapses, those people may very well be back out on the job market because when the incentives aren't there, the businesses will contract quickly.

MG: You're running these programs in New York that in some ways mirror this idea of universal basic income. What are the programs that are happening right now in that city?

ANDREW YANG: Well, we just announced a small universal basic income trial in the town of Hudson, New York, where. 20 residents will get $500 a month for five years. So I think this is a long enough timeframe of any study, but there are bigger trials happening out west. And really the biggest trial of all is that tens of millions of Americans just got a 1200 dollar cheque. And I think that they liked it a lot. I think it made people's lives better. And right now, there's another Bill concert being considered in Congress that will set out another college dollar payment. So we're living universal basic income in real time right now.

MG: One of the criticisms of the universal basic income is that, yes, people will like it and they might like it too much and they might like it so much that they don't actually go back to work, that it removes the incentive for people to look for work or to work at all. What do you say in the face of that? You've heard that criticism a lot. What do you say in the face of that that issue?

ANDREW YANG: Well, I'm a data guy, and the data shows that only two groups work less when they're getting this kind of cash. New moms who spend more time with their children and teenagers do spend more time in school. The rest of us want to work. And the fact is, if you have unconditional income that you're going to keep, no matter what, it actually aligns your incentives with doing more work, because then if you make more, you'll keep that too.

MG: What about the issue of cost, that governments around the world here in Canada, but also in the United States are sending out these cheques, supporting people, because this is an extraordinary event and it's costing a lot of money to do that. But governments have to do it because we're in the midst of this cataclysmic event. Can we afford to do this long term?

ANDREW YANG: We can afford to do this long term because the money doesn't go anywhere. After it comes into our hands, it goes right into our communities for food and day-care and heating oil, local non-profits, local businesses. This is a trickle up economy that is necessary and it's completely sustainable. The economic growth that's produced from this money in our hands pays for a significant proportion of it, as does the reduction in our health care costs, incarceration, many of the things that we're spending billions and billions of dollars on every day. And I want to give a special mention to my friend Floyd Marinescu, who launched a basic income organisation in Canada called UPI Work. So if you want to support universal basic income in Canada, get behind Floyd, get behind his organisation UPI work because it does work. And actually in Canada, you all demonstrated it very powerfully.

MG: There is a lot of talk about how we will come out of this moment and how we could or might or should be different. And people will say that we don't want to go back to normal because normal didn't work for a lot of people. When we come out of this, what do you see the economy looking like in the best case scenario? How do you think that you talk with your country, the American economy could work better for more people.

ANDREW YANG: First, we have to face the reality that we're going to be in a deep, dark hole for years without some massive changes. And there's only one entity that can make those changes happen. And that is, in America's case, the federal government. But it's not just us. I mean, it's true in Canada, it's going to be true around the world. So when we talk about positive possibilities for the future economy, we have to be really realistic that none of that will happen unless there is leadership from government and massive levels of investment in America. We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, trillions of dollars to help form a new kind of economy that actually works for our people. Now, I'm optimistic that we'll be able to think bigger about these challenges and the right approaches, but they will only happen if government makes them happen.

MG: Andrew Yang, it's good to speak with you. Thank you.

ANDREW YANG: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Andrew Yang, a candidate in the 2020 U.S. Democratic presidential primaries, recently launched a new podcast. It's called Yang Speaks. He was in New Platt's New York talking about what's happening in the United States, but also here in Canada, where the federal government has, as you know, pledged hundreds of billions of dollars to support workers, employers, seniors, students. The COVID economy is also reviving interest in a basic income for Canadians, have been pilot projects here before, but nothing on the scale that some people are hoping for. Sheila Regehr is the chairperson of the Basic Income Canada Network, which has pushed for an unconditional $22,000 annual basic income for all Canadians. She's in Toronto. Ken Boessenkool is a public policy economist with a long history of advising conservative leaders, including Stephen Harper and Preston Manning. He's in Lethbridge, Alberta. Good morning to you both.

SHEILA REGEHR: Good morning, Matt.

KEN BOESSENKOOL: Good morning.

MG: Candidate Andrew Yang convince you that a universal basic income is the right approach for the situation we find ourselves in right now?

SHEILA REGEHR: So I don't worry much convincing to begin with, that's for sure. What do you think is really interesting is the fact that he said they have looked to Canada. And that's interesting in particular ways because each country is going to be a bit different. And I think he's got an incredible pulse on the American population. The Canadian experience is a bit different. In addition to our pilot and Dauphin, Manitoba, which he talked about from the 70s and a more recent one in Ontario, we've run programs that are very much like a basic income for seniors and families with kids for decades. So we're way ahead of the game and our evidence supports everything he said.

MG: Ken, what about for you? Did Andrew convince you?

KEN BOESSENKOOL: You know, sometimes really bad policy in normal times becomes really good policy in bad times, and I think this is an example where I advocated very strongly at the beginning of this Corbitt crisis that we do a universal basic income because we had one problem people losing their jobs and therefore we needed one solution. But in normal times, poverty has as many causes as it has almost as it has people. And I think it's wrong in normal times to use a single instrument, a universal basic income to address low income.

MG: How can it be wrong? I mean, people is we heard from Andrew Yang. People would be, he believes, better off if, you know, they're losing their jobs. But they were still getting the thousand dollars a month, or what have you.

KEN BOESSENKOOL: Right, so our employment insurance program has a whole bunch of requirements that people who are on that program are helped to find work and many of our welfare programs do the same thing. A universal basic income just give people money and gets rid of all those programs. And I think that would be, I would almost say, bordering on immoral. We should be helping those people get back to work and universal basic income says. You just get a cheque and we're not going to worry about helping you get back to work. And so I think the reason we have different programs is that we have different reasons for poverty. In a crisis like we're in now, that's different. In a crisis you have one problem, people losing their jobs, needing to pay for groceries, needing to pay for rent. So in a crisis, what I call a crisis, basic income makes a lot of sense. But in normal times, I just don't think it makes any sense.

MG: Sheila, is it borderline immoral to pay people $1000 a month, but as Ken says, remove some of those other supports that might be there for them?

SHEILA REGEHR: So, no, it's not immoral. I think it's almost immoral to do the opposite. I want to agree with Ken in a way. So I agree that we need something like this in a crisis. But we've been in an inequality and insecurity crisis for a long time, not just Canada but around the world. What it has done is raise the stakes. It hasn't changed any of the rest of that. One of the things that's really important to understand about a basic income, and Andrew talked about this, is that people need a sense of security, of certainty, of some confidence, some ability to plan for the future. And all of the evidence that we've got shows that that's what a basic income does. That kind of security allows you to get out into the economy to improve your health, education. I am with the public health advice chorus on this. We must follow the evidence and all of the evidence that we've got from around the world and from Canada's seniors and kids programs shows that this is a way to go for people and the economy.

MG: Just briefly explain your suggestion that the group, your group has a $22000 annual basic income for Canadians. What sort of difference would that make for somebody who's living at or near the poverty line in this country?

SHEILA REGEHR: So just to be clear, in in the policy options document that we put out for people who are interested, it's on our Web site. We model three options and one of them is the big universal demo grant, everybody gets a cheque, version that Andrew Yang is promoting in the States and that Floyd Marinescu in Canada is promoting through UBI Works. He's a former board member of ours. But there's a vast range of expertise in this country. There are different perspectives on this. So one of the models that tends to be most likely in Canada is the one that fills in the gap between seniors and kids. So it addresses 18 to 64 year olds. That $22000 in the year we modelled, it is the equivalent of what the serve is. So there's a rationale for that. It approximates a general poverty level in Canada and make sure that everybody really does have enough to meet basic needs. The Ontario pilot has shown that, you know, people just excel when they have a chance to do so.

MG: Ken Boessenkool. What do you make of the proposal that Sheila has outlined?

KEN BOESSENKOOL: A universal basic income in good times of that of that size will almost certainly require that we get rid of many other programs that are currently providing supports and so do want to provide the same level of support to a family without children with autism as we do to a family with children with autism, do want to provide the same level of support in the same program to a family that needs child care as we do to a family that doesn't need childcare. Look, as I said from the beginning, there are so many different reasons why people have low income and there are different reasons why there are different government programs and an end to wrap those all up into a single basic income. I actually think will increase inequality because there are many people under that situation who wouldn't get this, meet their specific needs and the specific reasons why they're facing challenges addressed. And so, you know, I don't agree at the end of this, but I think there's a reason we have complicated government programs because poverty is complicated. And at that, at the bottom of it all for me is I think we want to have. There's a there's an intrinsic value that society has in work. And many of our government programs, employment, insurance and welfare. The two biggest ones have parts of those programs that encourage people to get back to work. And that's because our society values work for the people that she was talking about the gap, the people in the Gap, those people who in 1864 and we want to be encouraging and helping those people get work.

MG: You wrote in the globe and mail that if we bring in a basic income, then these are your words: You'll be a ski bums. Here we come. Is there any evidence that people wouldn't work if they're getting universal basic income, Ken?

KEN BOESSENKOOL: I admit that the evidence is mixed? I think part of the challenge with some of the evidence is that a lot of the trials we have done have been fairly short term trials. And so people the long term effects of this aren't felt as much. But I come back to it's not just it's not just that a UBI would have incentives for people not to work, which I think would be there. I think it's also that the programs we currently have encourage and help people get back to work. And by definition, a UBI just sends a cheque. And so I think it's not just the incentive problem, but it's also the complicated nature of our workfare programs and our employment insurance programs to try and get people back to work and that active part of those programs that we would be losing as well.

MG: Sheila Regehr, if you could, $22000 a year. Is that going to reduce your incentive to work?

SHEILA REGEHR: So I'm going to agree with Ken. There are a lot of other programs out there that serve a lot of very good purposes, like employment insurance. Social assistance, unfortunately, is not one of those. It is soul destroying as well as physically and mentally harmful to people. But a lot of those other programs do serve needs. In our modelling. We show that we clearly can afford this. We modelled everything within the current tax transfer system. We didn't touch any other programs. So, you know, we didn't touch EI. We didn't touch any of those things.

MG: How much would it cost? How much how much would a universal basic income cost?

SHEILA REGEHR: So our first option, which is based, again, according to the formula that we use for seniors and kids. So I disagree with Canada. We have long term evidence. We have decades of evidence that this kind of formula works. So that, oh, I forget, I don't have the thing right in front of me. I think it's one hundred and thirty some odd billion, but it's all funded. It's all funded from money that's already there. What it does is reprofile what the money that's going out in ways that aren't getting very good results. And it looks to the tax breaks that we are providing to extremely wealthy people who don't need it.

MG: Ken, could we afford something like this if the money is there to Sheila's point and perhaps your repurposing it for more effective means? Can the country afford something like this?

KEN BOESSENKOOL: So the money that Sheila says is there are these other programs that I'm talking about. And I think, you know, Professor Milligan from the university, British Columbia has written a piece for the City Howe Institute, where he lays out a really small basic income and a very generous base can come close, too closely aligned to it. She was suggesting and the numbers just are too big for us to contemplate. When I did my crisis, basic income calculations, it was $57 billion that the government would be sending out and they would recapture some of that through the tax system in the following year. And that's a number that is just going to do that. It's just too big to contemplate. I think it's too big. I don't. I'm not as optimistic that that there's enough wealthy people around to tax to get this back. And so I just I don't think it's affordable. And I would ask people to go read Professor Milligan's piece for the [unintelligible].

MG: The question that I asked Andrew Yang was what we come out of this thinking about that if we go back to the normal that for a lot of people didn't work. Isn't this the opportunity for big, bold ideas that could make the new normal better than the old normal, Ken?

KEN BOESSENKOOL: Yes, I think there is opportunities, but I would instead of looking to replace a whole suite of programs with something completely different that I think is not as good. I think we should look at how we can tweak existing programs or make programs for individuals in Canada who have low income better. And I'll just give a quick example, which is our employment insurance program. Clearly, only 60 percent of people qualify for employment insurance because it was designed for a workforce from the 1970s. And our workforce today is very different. I mean, I have a number of children and I ready have a grandchild. And the way to be that the way that they work and the jobs that they have is very different than even there were jobs that I had and certainly different than the jobs my dad had. And so I think the unemployment insurance system hasn't kept pace with the type of economy, the type of jobs that exist today. And we ought to look at how we can change that. But to replace all of that with a single cheque, I think is the wrong approach.

MG: In good times, Sheila Regehr, Andrew Yang says that this is an opportunity that something that he fought for to be the president of the United States now seems to be being picked up by that administration. And he sees a door that could be opened to make this longer term. Do you think that there's a chance that, given the moment we're in right now and what government is doing, that this is the opportunity to make basic income more than a pilot project?

SHEILA REGEHR: I think the opportunities there. I think the interest is there. It's growing. There are lots of proposals out there now to look at. None of them I've seen talk about replacing other programs so there's that in its favour. But it's also gaining a lot of political traction as we see, as Ken suggested, we see all the gaps in our current programming that have shown up because we have to keep adapting the Serb and its spin offs. And we would have been better off if we had had a basic income to begin with. We need one to get out of this crisis to rebuild and get on with building the economy before the next crisis hits. And it will come. We have incredible strong support within the Senate. There is a letter representing a million youth in this country who see an economic future that needs to look brighter than it does right now for them. Manitoba chiefs are supporting a basic income and it really is growing from all sectors. Public health supports this. So I think this is the time.

MG: It's good to speak with you both about this. You agree in some ways and more than you disagree. Thanks for being here.

SHEILA REGEHR: Thank you, Matt.

KEN BOESSENKOOL: My pleasure.

MG: Sheila Regehr chairs the Basic Income Canada Network. She's in Toronto. Ken Boessenkool is a public policy economist. He was in Lethbridge, Alberta. This is The Current I Matt Galloway. We planted the seed a couple of weeks ago on this program dedicated to Joy. Something to cheer you up in these trying times. It was a an idea for you to end the story. We had Michael Lista, writer and poet, write the beginning of a story. You had to finish it in a minute or less. We got all sorts of submissions. Here's Michael Lista with a reading of the story ending sent in by Christine Pilgrim in Vancouver.

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VOICE 1: The girl threw the cup with the string attached to the neighbour boy. She'd made a telephone that was just for them and had a cup of her own that she could talk to the boy through the cup, landed on the boy's bedroom window sill. Their parents had grounded them both, but she could still see him in his blue room with his Mickey Mouse clock on the wall. And she would wave and he would wave back. Sometimes he would dress up as Superman just for himself, and the girl would see him in his blue suit and his red cape and thought that he looked sad and brave. They used to play in the willow tree on their street, swinging from its long, sweet branches and laughing until the street lights would come on and their moms would call them home. The cup landed with a thump. The boy opened his window and put the cup to his ear. The girl pulled the line tight, almost tugging him out onto the laneway. Her voice travelled like a song over the string. I want to tell you something, she said.

VOICE 2: My dad thinks your mum's fantastic. He talks about her all the time. If she likes him, she should wave. She could even blow him a kiss if they get married. We'd be in the same family and then we could play together again. If she doesn't like him, she should close the blinds.

MG: I did not anticipate the story going there. Christine Pilgrim, thank you for your ending to the story. We'll hear a couple more tomorrow. We're back in about six minutes time. I'm talking about why a book about Winston Churchill is such a huge pandemic hit. The author, Erik Larson, joins me coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

What can Churchill teach us about crisis leadership?

Guests: Erik Larson, Zoe Bell

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come. It is an idle time for stunt doubles. So she organised a virtual fight. You'll hear from Zoë Bell coming up. But first, it is his finest hour. Again.

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We shall fight in France. We shall fight in the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost maybe. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the field and int he streets. We shall fight in the hills. But she'll never surrender.

MG: It's been nearly 80 years since Winston Churchill delivered that famous speech during the evacuation of allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk in France. Why are we talking about it today? Well, many leaders have been turning to Churchill's words during this pandemic and to a new book called The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance during the Blitz. Erik Larson wrote that book, which is now a bestseller, and he's with me now. Erik Larson, good morning.

ERIK LARSON: Good morning.

MG: You're having a moment.

ERIK LARSON: Believe me, I didn't plan it.

MG: No, but it is the moment that I think many authors would dream of, not obviously in the middle of a pandemic. But what is this moment like where people are turning to a book because of the time that we're in?

ERIK LARSON: Yes, you know, it's in fact, a phenomenon. I mean, at first I thought I was dreaming, but. But it is the case. I mean, I hear every day from people who are for some reason turning to this book for solace. And on one hand, I'm delighted, of course. On the other, I'm kind of astounded, because, honestly, if you turned to a time of mass death and chaos for solace, you're really not doing very well at the moment. But, you know, it's very interesting. And I think what people are being drawn to actually is the sense of competence on Churchill's part and in leading the empire through that period. And so inspiring a new level of courage among the British populace. That's what I think people are resonating with.

MG: That speech that we just heard is one of the most famous bits of oratory of all time. There is. And I don't know whether it's apocryphal or not, but there is a story and it comes up in your book about what he said right after he delivered those words to a colleague.

ERIK LARSON: Something to the effect that, yes, we'll use it to quote the statements only. You'll have to use the butts of beer bottles, or something along those lines, because that's all we've got.

MG: What does that say? I mean, he delivers that Rouse's a nation, but is also realistic about what's going on around him. What was so powerful about that moment?

ERIK LARSON: Well, this to me is the hallmark, one of the hallmarks, of Churchill's abilities as a leader. You know, we all know his great rhetoric. We know those lines in particular. And those are terrific rhetorical flourishes. But really, really, what strikes me [unintelligible[ during my research is that beyond that, there is at the core of these speeches, there is there is that the way he structures them is really, I think, quite brilliant. First of all, he does not sugarcoat. He reveals the real state of affairs, a very sober appraisal. But then he comes back with grounds for optimism or at least grounds for encouraging people to rise to there better, better selves, and then ends with some great flourish, some great rhetorical flourish that, you know, literally or metaphorically drives people from their chairs and feeling much, much better about themselves and the world. And so I think that that's kind of a key element. Hope always realistic, but always providing realistic grounds for optimism.

MG: How important is that sense of honesty during any crisis when it comes from a leader?

ERIK LARSON: Well, I think it's vital because, you know, otherwise you have this bizarre dissonance. I mean, you know, it's foolish to think that the people don't know what the situation is mean like right now with this pandemic racing through the world. And, you know, I could mark the day during my. Actually, I was on my book tour and the day was March 12th when suddenly everything went to hell. And, you know, I as a lay person and all those around me, we all knew what the score was. But then to have a leader tell you, you know, it's nothing, it's going to go away. It's a hoax. And so forth sets up a real dissonance and a real distrust. And then you have to turn elsewhere for the leadership that you need.

MG: How was Churchill able to reassure Britons that they would get through what seemed like the apocalypse?

ERIK LARSON: Well, it certainly did seem like the apocalypse at the time. You know, again, he was, firstly, is very, very confident. And that arises from that ineffable quality of people, his character. But he also, on a very practical level, he understood the power of symbolic acts, even the smallest symbolic act. You know, there's a sort of a continuum at the small end. You have his refusal to even to refer to Hitler by his name. He would refer to him as that man or that wicked man. But then you have at the other end of the spectrum, you have Churchill - after the first deliberate bombing of London on September 7th, 1940 - you have Churchill visiting the bombed out areas of London and showing the populace in a very vivid, visceral way how much he cared. And that he was there for them. It was, by the way, at that point, a fairly risky thing to do, because it was not at all clear that the public would not resent Churchill for not protecting them. But he went anyway and found, of course, that the populace was delighted to have him there. But but it's very important to be seen to be seen being courageous, but also being empathic. And that's it. So that was another element of the palette of tools in his leadership. Well, I'm really mixing up now.

MG: But I know what you mean. It's also easy to look back and say this is what he should have done or shouldn't done. In the sweep of history. What would you say would be these are the things that he accomplished. But what were the missteps in trying to project that that aura of not just competency, but somebody that you could follow, somebody that you would rally around?

ERIK LARSON: Well, you know, I think in terms of projecting [unintelligible], I can't really I can't- maybe you can refresh me, but I can't really, I can't really think of a moments where he misstep. I mean, I can tell you that that were a couple of a couple of incidents where it where he tried to keep- in one case, that was the sinking of a ship carrying children and re evacuating London and many, many died. And his initial instinct, unfortunately, in that case was to keep it secret. You know, again, they're setting up that dissonance I was referring to earlier, because, you know, I mean, how do you keep something like that secret when you've got all these grieving parents and, you know, the news on the other side of the ocean is running through all the papers of America. So that was clearly a misstep. But otherwise, I mean, I think he did a really excellent job in it and bolding the British populace to stand up to this this existential threat.

MG: What do you think we're looking for from our leaders now?

ERIK LARSON: Well, define 'we'. Down here, down here in the United States, I mean, we're looking for anything. You know, at some morsel that show that, you know, there is someone actually sentient, empathic and moral in charge, which we don't have. And so what we look for, I mean, I live in New York. And, you know, the governor of the state of New York has, I believe, risen to the occasion and is giving us the kind of encouragement, but also sober discussion that we all need. And one thing I love about, you know, I mean, you can fault him for many, many things, believe me. But one thing one thing I really like about his daily briefings, first of all, they are daily briefings. They're [unintelligible] things. They're not talking about ratings and how well he did, you know, in the polls or something like that. Every day he gives a very, you know, very statistical assessment of what's going on, what's going to happen. But he also takes real effort to remind everybody that, yes, okay, the death rate is going down. It's only, you know, what happened yesterday was 162 in the state of New York because of COVID. But, you know, he is very quick to qualify that and say, you know, it's not only. These are 162 people who lost their lives. It's still terrible. You know, and he. So he has a moral core. He has empathy. And he is exhibiting that in his in his daily interactions with the public. And I think that's very reassuring. I know it's very reassuring to us.

MG: Let's listen to a couple of the leaders from around the world. This is the prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern. She said this as she laid out her country's response plan.

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If we continue to see community transmission without any intervention, the infection rate, then the number of individuals who we can tell from overseas would require hospital care in acute hospital care. Tens of thousands of New Zealanders would die.

MG: That's Jacinda Ardern from New Zealand. This is the British Columbia provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry.

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I went through surgeries. I've been through Ebola. I've been through the pandemic in 2009. And I just know how stressful it is for our health care system, for my colleagues and for families.

MG: Erik Larson. Those are two leaders that have won attention and support for how they have faced this crisis. What do you hear in those clips?

ERIK LARSON: Well, you know, what I hear above all is, is that, you know, again, I talk about this moral core and what I hear is the profound sense of empathy and concern. You know, this you know, in the case of here, that was the prime minister of New Zealand, correct? I had read of her some of her speeches and I tell myself, Yes, boy, that's the kind of leadership I wish we had. But I think the key to both of those snippets was that sense of that there was an empathic human being there, that there was actually a human being there who cared, who understood and was going through this with the rest of us.

MG: You say that Churchill taught people the art of being fearless. What do you mean by that?

ERIK LARSON: We know what I mean by that is that by himself demonstrating courage at all points and raw confidence in the ultimate outcome. Courage, I believe, is infectious. When you see somebody being bold, you want to be bold, too. And Churchill at all times are going to come back to this this idea of symbolic acts. Churchill was very aware that it was important to be seen being confident and being courageous. When there were air raids, Churchill was more than likely to go to the nearest rooftop to watch the raid and to cower in a shelter. And, of course, you know, this word of this got around. He was no fool. He understood that this was not purely something to satisfy his own need for the thrill of battle, which he did have by the way, he loved the battle, but he also understood the deep, tragic costs of war. So there was that nice blend. He always wanted to be seen or he knew the importance of being seen to be courageous.

MG: You have hinted at this. But if you take a look at what your president, Donald Trump, has done in this response, a lot of it is about projecting strength and projecting confidence, saying he's tough, not going to wear a mask because he thinks that he is impervious to the disease that other people in his office perhaps should wear them. But he's not going to wear a mask. What has his response, what effect has his response had on how Americans meet the challenge that their face? Well, what do you think?

ERIK LARSON: I would quarrel, actually, with that, that his projecting strength. He's what I would say is he's projecting now actually sort of a false bravado in between in- Well, bravado, I guess this is apparently there's a falsity there. But in between talking about, you know, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to, you know, develop a vaccine at warp speed and all this. In between that he's tweeting wildly about bizarre things. And again, there's that dissonance. It's very it's very troubling. I mean, this is bad enough down here in the United States. You know with this pandemic, without having to worry about the guy in the Oval Office, and it really does, I think, add a level of tension. I know it has a level of tension that is this is makes this all a lot more difficult. And that is not what a leader is supposed to do.

MG: You write a book like this and you end up really getting to know the figure at the centre of it. And I'm just wondering, knowing what you know about Churchill, if he were in this moment, what would he want to say to people who are feeling anxious about the moment that we're in? How do you think he would frame that, do you think?

MG: Well, you know, again, I cut back to how he would how he structured his rhetoric. I mean, of course, today he has his speeches would be much shorter than they were back in 1940. I mean, he was a great one for letting the words roll. But, you know, again, I come back to today, I think what Churchill would have done, is he would have given us a very sober appraisal of what's happening of the importance of- well, first of all, the danger of how this thing is acting and, you know, the costs and likely costs and what's going to happen in the next six months. Just level with us, you know. But then I think he also, like I've alluded to before, I think he would have come back with real grounds for optimism and say, okay, in the meantime, here's what we're doing. You know, we have this group working on a vaccine. We have this group working on, you know, finding out what existing drugs might succeed and so forth. And that kind of thing would be very, I think, very encouraging and not falsely encouraging, but very encouraging. Honestly I mean, I don't I don't brag too much on what I do, but I don't want to really brag too much on Trump. But instead what we have is him deciding, okay, well, we're not going to help fund the World Health organisation. You know, pull back from that. And this is in the midst of a pandemic. What on earth is the man thinking? So I'm troubled by that kind of thing. But I think that I think that Churchill would have come back with [unintelligible], and then he would have ended with some great flourish of, you know, some rhetorical flourish that would have, I think, you know, delighted everybody. However, of course, today we would not want everybody getting up out of their chairs and rushing out into the streets. Quite the opposite.

MG: Stand on your balcony and bang the pots and pans instead.

ERIK LARSON: Stand in [unintelligible] your balcony and your butts.

MG: Erik Larson, a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.

ERIK LARSON: Thank you.

MG: Erik Larson is the author of eight books, six of which became New York Times best sellers, the most recent, certainly a best seller and timely as well. The Splendid and the Vile. The Saga of Churchill Family and Defiance during the Blitz. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. Tom Power, host of CBC Radio's Q joins us. Hello, Tom.

TOM POWER: Matt, how are you?

MG: Well, it's Thursday.

TP: I feel like we're running out of time for our check-ups on The Current. I'm bummed about it.

MG: Q returns to regular programming on Monday.

TP: I am really excited about that. But I must say I'm going to Miss Skittle coming on and talking to you about my cat.

MG: Which we've yet to really hear much from. I'll just say we haven't heard a lot from your vat.

TP: They can't afford or they can't afford or. It costs a little bit too much. I'm her agent these days and we're trying to make it all work.

MG: You're here to talk not about your cat, but other matters, including life in Hollywood.

TP: Life in Hollywood, especially stunt people. This is a really cool video that went sort of viral where a bunch of stunt people, stunt women, staged a fight scene while practicing physical distancing. isn't that cool.

MG: That's kind of neat.

TP: Her name is Zoe Bell, alias Nonperson. Quentin Tarantino's go to stunt person decided to call it 39 of her other friends and create an epic fight scene. I talked to her about how it all came together.

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ZOE BELL: Everyone got back quite quickly, which is either a testament to the project or to how bold they are. But everyone got back really quickly and massively, enthusiastically, and it was even just the way that it spread between actors and their stunt doubles. it was just constantly every day there was a light. I spoke to bla bla and she wants to play and I spoke to bla bla and she wants to play. And so it was just this kind of. I didn't know it was like a fire of kindling. Just keep going, it was awesome.

TP: We have a clip here. Take a listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

[Noise and indistinct chatter]

TP: Okay, so to break down what we're hearing right now, that's the sound of you punching Lucy Lawless, who you work with on Xena Lucy punching Supplementary Makin, who kicks Drew Barrymore with her roller skate and then Drew punches, Juliette Lewis. That was like the first 15 seconds of the video. Tell us how you put this thing together.

ZOE BELL: I kind of had an overall idea in my head. I had labelled, I had sort of listed all of the stunt woman in a particular order. So they knew that they were following each other. And then we would slot the overall idea was that we would slot the actresses in between all the stunt players and give them a little freedom. Either it would be the stunt player I would record the clip first we would get to the actors so the actor knew what they were responding to. Or the actor would kind of just do their thing and then we would make up the tail and the head to cement it altogether. There was a loop. It was quite a bit of juggling. This was, you know, it was kind of a spontaneous, ever evolving thing until the day that we exploded it and locked it down. If I was to do it again, I would probably come with, I would probably storyboard a little bit more specifically. But then who knows? Part of what? What I think is appealing about it is that kind of authentic authenticity and the energy that comes with these women, just like I mean, I hate to have people rerecord them because it didn't fit or I would come up with ideas that were inspired by one that I had seen. And I wanted to switch it around because it worked better in another way. So it was quite what's the word I'm looking for was a very fluid sort of experience, you know?

TP: Was anyone like, okay, I want to beat up this person?

ZOE BELL: Oh, yeah. There was definitely, you know, a lot of the actors and the stunt people that they've worked with before. So Heidi money-maker. She bought Hayley and Scarlett and her and Scarlett worked together on all kinds of stuff together. So there was definitely like they were gonna either come before or after each other. I did that with most of the stunt people in their actors because then it was also it made it a bit easier for me. I could delegate. I could say to Kim, can you go orchestrate basically what's going to happen between you, Caitlin, Danny and Cameron with Mack? And then they would kind of work on their piece and then send it through to me. And it worked great. And if I needed something different, then I would write back to one of the girls and they would just sort of do a slight tweak or an edit. And there was a talk. It was a complete team effort for sure.

TP: It's really amazing. And just to be clear, for people listening to this, it's kind of one long chain reaction and it's dependent on two people in different locations having sort of similar props. Sometimes there's a box of puzzle pieces flung into someone's face dirt that ends up in Halliburton’s pool. What's the craziest idea that actually ended up in the video?

ZOE BELL: Oh. I mean, I had reached out to Dana Stallman from New Zealand I've known since the days of Xena, and I was like, excuse the milking of a cliche, but if you could incorporate sheep in some way. I was half joking and she was like, oh, let me see what I can do. And she sent me back. Her being like rachet it into a stable of sheep. A stable. It's not a stable of sheep or was it?

TP: Yes, I think it's a stable of sheep.

ZOE BELL: The stable. And I just was like, okay, that's I mean-

TP: A flock. A flock of sheep.

ZOE BELL: A flock of sheep?

TP: Yes, I think a flock.

ZOE BELL: A bunch of sheep. I mean all of it was great. I reached out to someone else and I was like, what do you like on wheels? Like, I don't care if it's a skateboard or a motorbike or a bike or a car. And basically, they came to me now like, well, we've got a golf cart. I was like, do it hit me with a golf cart that's lit works, you know? So it was kind of spontaneous on the spot. Coming up with stuff, which I really enjoyed that. I mean, if I was to do it again, I might do it slightly differently just because the expectations around two might be slightly different.

TP: Before we go. You've been a stunt performer for 25 years. You're obviously not.

ZOE BELL: That makes me sound so old. I started when I was five.

TP: I'll say it like this. You've been a stunt performer for 25 years. Sure.

ZOE BELL: You must be old.

TP: But seriously, I'm interested to hear. You know, I've talked to like Olympic athletes and I've talked to like, you know, soccer players. But, you know, well, what have you been doing to keep your craft up time like this?

ZOE BELL: I mean, we ended up holed up in Colorado, so there was lots of hiking and getting out there. And we have a little garden that we've you know, it's got a piece of carpet in it. So we call it out, Jim. And I've just started just in the last probably two, three weeks sort of going, okay, cool, I want to get back into this again. And I can feel my strength and agility and flexibility kind of coming back in a way that it's how I feel most like myself, like when I'm out of shape. It's becomes a bit of an identity crisis, I think. So there's lots of sort of cross-training. Anything that I can do that that doesn't get me bored, I need to stay entertained otherwise. Otherwise I'll drink a beer instead.

TP: I think if you keep on making these videos, you'll keep in no problem.

ZOE BELL: Yes. Right.

TP: Nice to talk to you. Thanks so much for your time.

ZOE BELL: My pleasure. Take care.

MG: Tom Power in conversation with the stunt performer Zoë Bell. It is time to say goodbye to our friends in Newfoundland and Labrador. Cross-talk is next for you. We'll speak again tomorrow. In the meantime, for everyone else. Stick around. We're back in 90 seconds. It's nursing week and we will speak about the plight facing nurses on the front lines of this pandemic. What are they up against and what do they need further in terms of protection on those front lines? You'll hear that coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

Seg 7

Guest: Katie Stelmanis

[clip] [/clip]

MG: This is The Current, I'm Matt Galloway. Tom Power, host of Q is here. Hello, Tom.

TP: How are you?

MG: Everything's okay.

TP: Good. What's E.T. short for?

MG: What is E.T. short for?

TP: He's got little legs.

MG: I heard from a listener who said that she laughed for the first time yesterday, you know, at one of your jokes.

TP: I'm one for 14. It's pretty good. He's got little legs. I think that my brother told me that.

MG: Not bad.

TP: Shout out, Brian Power, by the way. Give credit where credit is due. Here to talk what's the music? You're a fan of Austra.

MG: What an interesting band.

TP: Absolutely combining somehow indie rock and opera together. And up until now, Katy Stelmanis more focussed on the music and on this one after going through, after going through some stuff, she decided to write personally for the first time. And I asked her to the people you're writing about ever mind? And she said, I think when you get in a relationship with someone who's a musician, you just assume you're going to end up on the other side of it. Here's my conversation with Katie Stelmanis of the band Austra.

SOUNDCLIP

KATIE STELMANIS: This record is probably the most, I guess. I guess it's the most personal record. And the lyrics are like quite - I kind of forget what the word is - but I just want to say blatant or something, they're quite direct.

TP: How so?

KATIE STELMANIS: Well, lyrics for me have been a bit of a journey, to be honest, in the beginning. I like my first record. I just didn't care about lyrics. I didn't think about them. I would kind of say whatever was said. And throughout my career of making records, they've slowly started to have more importance for me. Part of that was because I recognise they're important to everybody else in the world. And so my last record, Future Politics, I put a lot of work into the lyrics, but it was very much about like the outside world and about world politics, obviously. And with this record, I guess putting out a record like Future Politics made me really feel, question, kind of the role of an artist when you're talking about politics and when you're talking about activism, and one of the things I was thinking a lot about is how musicians and artists in general have this power to kind of connect with people on an emotional level and to be vulnerable with people and how that kind of allowing people, reminding people how to kind of be in touch with their own humanity and their own vulnerabilities. I think is a very powerful and important tool to have. And I sort of approach this record thinking like that. I very much wanted this record to be vulnerable and I wanted to have that connection with people. And I felt like it was the right time for me and the right time. You know, in terms of what we're all going through in the world, even before the pandemic.

TP: What I find interesting about that is that oftentimes when I would hear someone say that, you know, they wrote about the end of a relationship or even just they were vulnerable, introspective lyrics, it would largely be like, you know, and if the audience gets it, I know I don't really care about it. Kind of needed to get this stuff out. I do find it interesting that you do you consider the audience relating to it like you consider the audience taking it in kind of from the get go.

KATIE STELMANIS: Yes, well, I think that I spent a lot of time listening to music that I found very healing and inspirational, and it did a lot for me personally and I just wanted to be able to kind of offer that as well to people. So, yes, I mean, it was definitely a conscious decision to make something that is much more vulnerable than anything I've really done before.

TP: Katie, thanks. Thanks for your time.

KATIE STELMANIS: Thank you so much.

MG: That's Tom Power, host of Q in conversation with Katie Stelmanis of the band Austra. And that's it for the current for today. If you missed anything on the program, you want to hear it again. You should go to the CBC Listen app. It is a free app. It has allows you to listen to the very best of all your things. CBC Radio, CBC podcasts, CBC Music. You can stream it from wherever you happen to be. It's free. Find it wherever you find your apps. Tomorrow on the program. It's Friday. And among our programming selections, another selection, hopefully cross your fingers. I think so. From Stuart McLean and the Vinyl Cafe. As we say, we can't promise anything, but I think we can promise that. In the meantime, here's a bit of music from the new Austra album. It's the first single. It's called Anyways. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Take care. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

Thursday May 14, 2020 Full Transcript

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